Overview of Excel
Excel is a spreadsheet offered by Microsoft made up of columns and rows, where you can store information between the columns and the rows. You can store all sort of information on excel including but not limited to values, names, dates, quantities, currencies, etc. You can also write excel formulas or functions in the cell to affect multiple cells. Excel allows you to take raw data and draw clean reports by product, regions, and month using simple tools like pivot tables that do not require formulas.
Uses of Data Analysis
Excel finds many uses in most corporate meetings, enabling data analysts and Business Intelligence practitioners advices key decision makers on what moves to make based on the available raw and cleaned data.
For instance in making key business decision, Excel offers one of the best non-complex ways to arrive a key decision. Excel can help you analyze a new market quickly, build a weighted scoring, and run a break-even analysis.
You can also use Excel to see trend and analyze market performance. I have used it before to analyze Import-Export data in pharmaceuticals to segment the market. The info aids in curating reliable paths for companies trying to enter the market since I can rely on the historical data and how the different ATC (Anatomical Therapeutic Areas) are performing in a given area.
Excel Features or Formulas
Excel formulas are meant to make your work easier especially when dealing with hundred thousand rows of raw data and trying to make sense out of it. These functions come in in cleaning
Excel Formulas
Data cleaning is the most critical stage that precedes data processing and analyzing. It ensures that data is
accurate, complete and ready for analysis and reporting. Data cleaning is usually achieved by various Excel formulas and shortcuts to remove errors, duplicates, and any inconsistencies in the data that might affect analysis. Here are some of the formulas or shortcuts I routinely use in data cleaning:
- - to capitalize the some of the names in the data you can use (=PROPER).
- - to lower case is good for use inconsistencies in the capitalization of names (=LOWER) 3 - to substitute a certain term that is repetitive while you want to make all the same (control F to search the item and then Replace _the items with the nae you would it to _reflect). 4 - Dates you can get them through the =TRIM function if it comes with times or the (=DATEVALUE)
- - You can convert these formulas to values simply copying the entire column or affected areas and pasting them as values (press these buttons simultaneously control shift v)
Pivot Tables
One of the most important tools of Excel is Pivot tales, which allows users analyze large sets of data within a short time frame. A live pivot simulation allows you to draw different insights from the same data. I use pivot tables so often, especially when discussing with stakeholders to reveal hidden patterns in raw data and see trends.
Creating a pivot table takes less than 5 easy steps:
- Click on any cell inside your data and press Control _simultaneously with _T. The short cut allows you to turn the data into a table.
- Go under the Excel ribbon Insert click the drop down on the PivotTable and select table range.
- Clicking on the pivotable template on the left allows you to make adjustments to what data from your table to will used. You will have the Rows, Values, Filter, and Column sections.
- Pivot Tables also have other powerful tools such as calculated fields and items, slicers, running totals, and percentage different, which help in analyzing data further.
- You can also create charts from the pivot table to showcase trends in the data you are analyzing.
Impact of How Excel in Viewing Data
Most people use Excel to draw insights from raw data and make insightful decisions. For instance Business Intelligence officers use it to analyze market trends while accountants use it to analyze financial statements. Excel is a tool that assist everyone analyze trends, uncover hidden patterns, and make meaningful analysis that goes beyond the superficial perceived trends.
Top comments (1)
Good effort. The article has strong real-world examples, especially the pharmaceutical import-export analysis and PivotTable use, but please polish the grammar, fix Markdown formatting issues, organize the formula section better, and add screenshots or practical examples to support the steps before publishing.