What is excel
Microsoft Excel, is a spreadsheet program made by Microsoft. This is a tool used to organise data in rows and columns, carry out calculations, analyse data, visualise information with graphs and charts, automate tasks using formulas, functions, or macros. Excel is widely used in business, schools and other entities to perform all the above functions.
Working with excel
When working with excel it is key to remember how to edit and save any changes made in the worksheet. To save a workbook you can use the shortcut ctrl+s. This saves any changes made on the workbook and prevents the loss of any unsaved work.
Excel has a column side and a row. The column side are labelled in letters while the rows side is labelled by numbers. This can be seen in the image below.
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Working the excel
Working with excel is easy. It involves entering columns and row values and storing them in excel. For instance, let us assume you are the principal of a certain how school and you would love to know the perfomance of the students in the last examination. You can use excel to find the best performing student, the mean score, average score, lowest score and such.
In this article I will input data for 10 students in the class and their scores in various subjects and carry out analysis using this data. This is the data that we will be using.
Analyzing data.
Mean- This is the average score for specific selected data. For instance in our data we can use the average function to find the mean score of the students in each subject. We use the function =Average(). Please note that all formulas in excel must start with an equal sign =.
Sum- This adds the various points and finds the total points. In this we use the function = Sum().
The Min and Max functions
The min and max functions finds the minimum and maximum values in a specific column. We usually use =Min() for the minimum and =Max() for the maximum value.
Count function.
The count function is used to find the specific number that exist in a certain column. In this function we use the formula =count()
The if and ifs function
The IF function checks whether a condition is true or false and returns one value if it’s true and another value if it’s false. The IFS function checks multiple conditions in order and returns a value for the first condition that is true. For instance in our data we can use the IF function to assign grades on the scores. For 90 and Above we can assign A,for grades between 80 and 90 we can assign B and for grades between 70 and 80 we will assign a C. The rest below 70 will be F. We will use this formulae =IFS(J2>=90,"A", J2>=80,"B", J2>=70,"C", TRUE,"F")
VLOOKUP AND HLOOKUP, XLOOKUP
In Excel, the LOOKUP function is used to find a value in a row or column and return a related value from another row or column, usually requiring the data to be sorted, while HLOOKUP (horizontal lookup) searches for a value across the first row of a table and returns a corresponding value from a specified row below it, and XLOOKUP is a newer, more flexible function that can search both vertically and horizontally without needing sorted data and can replace older lookup functions like LOOKUP and HLOOKUP.
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