HOW EXCEL IS USED IN REAL-WORLD DATA ANALYSIS

#beginners

What is Excel?

Everything we do nowadays forms part of data that can be useful to an organization or individual. This leads to the need for data collection. Excel therefore helps us to organize this data in rows and columns, stores the data and analysis can be done to generate insights.

Uses of Excel in real-world Data Analysis:

Sales data from a supermarket can be used to determine fast moving products and those that bring in most revenue; from which they ensure adequate stock of those two categories.
Customer feedback to an organization can be analyzed to get information on areas that need improvement, what is working well and even suggest what products/services they'd like to be introduced.
We use excel to track daily, monthly, annual expenditures of organizations and individuals. As an individual you can get to know how much you spend on different categories and how you can best optimize your income and expenses.

Excel features & formulas learned so far:

Data types we have in excel are numeric and alphabetic. Numeric data types include currency, percentage, date. Alphabetic data are basically in text format.
Formula bar is a toolbar that is used to enter, view and edit cell contents.
Inserting a new row/column by selecting a row/column, right click and select insert.
The categories of functions;
1. Aggregate / Mathematical functions - SUM(), AVERAGE(), MIN(), MAX()
2. Statistical functions - COUNT(), COUNTIF(), COUNTIFS()

Personal Reflection:

How has learning Excel changed the way I see data?

Usually when presented with a large dataset I can 'freeze' from the sight of it all and wonder where to start from. But learning excel and its features ensures that I understand the process of data collection, cleaning, analysis, visualization and generating insights.