Data Analysis with Excel

Business data analysis presents a challenge for data analysts. Business data is often aggregated, recorded over time, and tends to exhibit autocorrelation. Additionally, and most problematically, the amount of business data is usually quite limited. These characteristics lead to a situation where many of the tools in the analyst’s tool belt (e.g. regression) aren’t ideal for the task. Despite these challenges, proper analysis of business data represents a fundamental skill required of Business/Data Analysts, Product/Program Managers, and Data Scientists. In this tutorial, presenter Dave Langer will show how to get started analyzing business data in a robust way using Excel. No programming or statistics is required.

What you’ll learn

• The types of business data and why business data is a unique analytical challenge

• Requirements for robust business data analysis

• Using histograms, running records, and process behavior charts to analyze business data

• The rules of trend analysis

• How to properly compare business data across time, organizations, geographies, etc.