Introduction to data analysis

Data Analysis in Excel

Nick Edwards

Analyst at Mynd

What to expect

• This is a beginner course with more intermediate topics
  • Advanced PivotTable functionality
  • Complex logical functions
  • Scenario analysis and forecasting
• Prerequisites
  • Introduction to Excel
  • Data Preparation in Excel

That's Bananas!

• Act as consultants for fictional SaaS start-up: Bananas
  • Software as a Service (SaaS)
  • Analyze their sales data to find trends and forecast
• Explore Bananas Sales.xlsx
  • July 2019 - June 2021
  • Organized by Customer ID and Sales Month

Where be the data, matey?

• Exploratory data analysis (EDA) is the process of understanding the dataset.
  • Learn the structure of the data
  • Uncover patterns or errors
  • Find relationships and insights
  • Crucial first step in good analysis

Performing exploratory data analysis

1. Data preparation
   • Collecting
   • Cleaning

Performing exploratory data analysis

1. Data preparation
   • Collecting
   • Cleaning
2. Data exploration
   • Learn about each variable
   • Compute summary statistics
   • Find correlations and trends
   • Visualize the data

Performing exploratory data analysis

1. Data preparation
   • Collecting
   • Cleaning
2. Data exploration
   • Learn about each variable
   • Compute summary statistics
   • Find correlations and trends
   • Visualize the data
3. Hypothesis generation and further analysis
   • i.e. "Sales should increase over time."

Summary statistics

• Measures of central tendency find the center of the dataset
  • Mean: the average value
  • Median: the middle value
  • Mode: the most common value

• Range: difference between the max and min

Let's practice!

Data Analysis in Excel