How Excel is used in Real World Data Analysis

A month ago, I challenged myself to learn data analysis, so I went shopping across the internet for a good place to start and the consensus was unanimous; check out good old Excel. So what exactly is Excel? Far from just being a digital ledger, excel is a powerful data engine. It is used in turning observations into trends in Field Research, helps businesses track sales and predict growth while in finance it is used to ensure every cent is accounted for. Learning Excel felt very intimidating at first, the aggregate and lookup functions were all too new to me! Once I stopped being anxious however, I have been enjoying the journey of discovering this ability excel has! Here are a few things I have learned and use often; COUNTIF () FUNCTION This simply counts how many times something appears in your list. In its simplest form, it asks: =COUNTIF(Where do you want to look?, What do you want to look for?) IF() FUNCTION This operator allows excel to ‘think’. It checks if a condition is true,