I teach K-8th grade but I try to do a refresher every fall on
using Excel to show data for science fair projects. I've seen
so many graphs that have the data entered incorrectly or
students using the wrong kind of graph to best show their
results. The kids get excited about changing the colors of
different parts of the graph. If they use color consistently
they can add a lot to the understanding of their results for
example if they're testing differences between boys and girls
they can choose one color to represent all the info for boys and
a different color to represent the info for girls.

You can also work out how long it would take them to save money
for something they want to buy. If it cost $149 they can see
how many weeks it will take them if they save $5/week vs
$20/week.

Some high schools do budgets to help students understand how
life choices will influence your standard of living. This can
be done in Excel. Students draw a paper that gives them a
starting point which might include a career with its
corresponding salary, a certain amount of student loans if they
needed to attend college for this career and a location where
they work ( big city, small town ). Then they research the type
of place where they want to live and kind of car they want and
see if it fits into the budget, decide if they're ready to marry
( pull another paper giving the career and salary and debts of
their spouse ), decide if they can afford to marry.

I also have students enter as best as they remember the scores
they got on the last few tests in their most difficult subject.
Then we try adding 2 more test scores to see what they need to
get on their next two tests to end up with an average that
they'll be happy with. I always show a few examples so students
can see that if you fail 2 tests, it's going to be very
difficult to end up with a B in the class even if you get 100s
on the next 2 tests and how likely is it that they're going to
get 2 100s in their most difficult class, especially if so far
they haven't managed anything better than a high C.

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