Solver Tool has the capability to solve linear (and often nonlinear) programming problems, and is available in Microsoft Excel as well as LibreOffice.

edX, an online learning destination and MOOC provider founded by Harvard University and MIT in 2012 and offering high-quality courses from the world’s best universities and institutions to learners everywhere, has developed a tutorial which shows the user how to (1) load the solver into the spreadsheet, (2) define the problem and write out formulas for the objective and constraints, and (3) solve the problem.…

Dana Lee Ling is a Professor at the College of Micronesia, who – amongst other academic tasks – is teaching students to use LibreOffice Calc to make statistical calculations. To support his lessons, he has published a manual – “Introduction to Statistics Using LibreOffice Calc, AOO Calc and Gnumeric” – based on the following contents: Populations and samples, Measures of middle and spread, Visualizing data, Paired data and scatter diagrams, Probability, Probability distributions, Introduction to the normal distribution, Normal distribution and z-values, Confidence intervals for the mean, Hypothesis testing against a known population mean, and Hypothesis testing two sample means.…

A frequently­ overlooked point of lock­-in with Microsoft Office is its default use of proprietary fonts. Contrary to the popular view, fonts are often not freely distributable, and may in fact be covered by restrictive license terms similar to proprietary software. Microsoft Office by default uses two such fonts: Calibri and Cambria. These fonts are only available in Microsoft Office, and are not freely available for download or use otherwise.…