How Excel is Used in Real-World Data Analysis

Okall Omondi — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 06:35:07 +0000

What is Excel?

Well, the simplest answer? Excel is a tool.
You might ask, which tool?
Think of it as a bookshelf, or the wardrobe in your house.
What does the bookshelf and the wardrobe have in common? Partitions.
Most bookshelves have identifiers to help you locate the exact partition where the book is stored. The last library I visited had letters and numbers. The letters were written horizontally (from left to right) across the bookshelf and the numbers were written vertically (from top to bottom). I could easily identify the exact partition by using the letter and number combination, for example the first partition in the bookshelf was A1. This is the exact way Excel is organized with letters and numbers.

The partition A1 in the bookshelf represents a cell in Excel. The horizontal letters (from left to right) of the bookshelf represent a row in an Excel, and the vertical numbers from top to bottom in a bookshelf represent a column in an Excel. A single bookshelf represents a worksheet in Excel and several bookshelves represent a workbook in Excel. Simple right?

How Excel is used in real world Data Analysis.

You have probably heard of the phrase “data is the new oil” right? What makes it the new oil? Apart from it being the new “money printer”, data is the “know it all”, it is the real story teller. However, before data can tell you stories and turn into your cash machine, you must first make sense of it, to understand what happened and why it happened. The process of understanding what happened and why it happened is called Data Analysis. By understanding what happened and why it happened, you can easily figure out what will happen (Data Science). Excel is fundamental in the understanding phase, and in the figuring out phase, because it acts as the story for the data to be understood and figured out.

Which areas do we then use Excel in the real world? Imagine this scenario, you are running a small refurbished laptops resale shop, every laptop you sell with a small profit on top of the purchase price, and making profits in your head. However, at the end of the month you find out you are short of cash to pay bills forcing you to borrow money from friends, yet, you did not sell any laptop at a loss. What do you do? This is where Excel comes in. Excel can help you to store your sales data, organize the data and clean the data. Excel also gives you formulas such as SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT and functions such as IF, SUMIF, AVERAGEIFS, VLOOKUP which you can use to do calculations and create logics to see how your business is doing. Excel also has pivot table functionality which is helpful in summarizing data quickly. You can also draw insights from the data using the various visualization tools in Excel such as charts and graphs to help you see where you are losing money and make informed decisions.

How has learning Excel changed how I see data?

Learning Excel and understanding its capabilities has been an eye opener, and I now view every instance of my life as a data point to be tracked and understood. This past week I have started tracking simple things in my life like the time I go to bed, the time I wake up, how long I take on a task, and so much more. I will be using this data to improve and be a better person.

Diving into Bug Bounty Hunting: My Journey Begins with Resources and Tips for Beginners

Okall Omondi — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 07:31:54 +0000

After taking the much needed break and rest in the festive seasons, a period in which I had much reflection on my career and life goals, I dove into cybersecurity with a focus on bug bounty hunting. I have been contemplating on this for a while, ever since I came across the 0 to 100K in Bug Bounty Year One thread on X by @Rhynorater. I used ChatGPT to create a bug bounty hunting road map and begun on a resource finding mission. I will write weekly posts documenting my journey and milestones into becoming a bug bounty hunter. This first article will document some of the useful resources that those aspiring to become bounty hunters can use. The resources range from ChatGPT, YouTube Channels, websites, GitHub Accounts, X Accounts, and SubReddits.

Remember

When starting out, always be aware of the shiny object syndrome and analysis paralysis. Shiny object syndrome (SOS) is the tendency to be distracted by new ideas (courses) that are often at the expense of your current goal, which is becoming a bug bounty hunter in this case. Analysis paralysis is that point when you cannot decide because you are overwhelmed with courses/ materials and you are not sure of which one to use.

Another thing I will recommend while starting is developing a good note taking system. There are various Note Taking Apps you can use, such as Notion, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Joplin, Obsidian and many others. When choosing a note app, there are factors you have to put into consideration. Some features I look for in a note taking app are cost, ease of use, organizational features, and cross device access. My choice is Obsidian. Having a good note taking system is like having a second brain. Good notes always come in handy along your career trajectory, and they are what will catapult you to the next level.

Resources

Now, back to resources. I will focus on the free resources here, as I believe most of the required knowledge is free if you have the patience and time to go after it.

ChatGPT: The first and key resource I found helpful is ChatGPT. You are not restricted to this. You can use GPTs of your choice like copilot, Gemini or any other you may prefer. I used ChatGPT to brainstorm and be sure that I really wanted to go into bug bounty hunting. After being sure I wanted this, I prompted it to come up with a learning path and a study plan for bug bounty hunting. There are unlimited ways you can use GPTs from generating explanations, examples and analogies, motivation, role-plays, questions, mind maps, mental associations and much more. You can also use them to engineer effective prompts which you can then re-use to get exact answers you want.
YouTube Channels: Some of the YouTube channels I have found to be amazing are:
NahamSec - Has detailed bug bounty tutorials and live hacking sessions.
STÖK - Offers practical bug hunting techniques and methodologies.
InsiderPhD - Insider PHD is great for beginners, provides structured learning content. This is the channel I have been using, mostly. I highly recommend it if you are starting out.
Jason Haddix - Industry veteran sharing advanced techniques and methodologies
TCM Security - Comprehensive ethical hacking and penetration testing tutorials
HackerSploit - Detailed tutorials on various security tools and techniques
LiveOverflow - In-depth technical content about security research and exploitation
PortSwigger - Official channel for Burp Suite with web security tutorials
Learning Websites:
PortSwigger Web Security Academy - Free, comprehensive web security training. I recommend PortSwigger Academy if you are starting out.
Bugcrowd University - Free educational resources for bug bounty hunters. Bugcrowd also provides a platform for the Vulnerability Disclosure Program (VDP) and Bug Bounty Programs (BBP). It is a good place to start your bug bounty hunting by creating an account on their platform.
TryHackMe - Interactive cybersecurity training platform with guided learning paths. Try Hack Me is fully free, but it has some amazing labs that provide hands-on experience.
HackTheBox - Platform offering realistic penetration testing labs and challenges
HackerOne Hacktivity - Public bug reports to learn from real-world examples. HackerOne also provides a platform for the Vulnerability Disclosure Program (VDP) and Bug Bounty Programs (BBP).
PentesterLab - Hands-on exercises for web penetration testing
VulnHub - Provides materials to gain practical cybersecurity experience
OWASP - Comprehensive resource for web application security knowledge
GitHub Accounts:
BugBounty: This GitHub account has most of the resources you need in becoming a bounty hunter.
X Accounts: There is an amazing Bug Bounty Community on X with lots of accounts dedicated to sharing information on Bug Bounty Hunting. I will not recommend any account in particular but if you are on X, search for a bug bounty and you’ll find lots of accounts with posts that will inspire you.
SubReddits: Reddit is another Social Media platform I like. There is an amazing community here with amazing people who are always ready to jump in and assist with any query you might be having. Just be sure to search first if the question was asked and answered before. Also, be sure to ask on the right subreddit. The subreddit for bug bounty hunters which is active, and I’d recommend you join is r/bugbounty/.