IBM Excel Basics for Data Analysis - A Review

Link to course

A Coursera Course Review

TL;DR: Good if you’re just starting out or clearing out some cobwebs.

I audited this course as a way of brushing up my Excel skills and to get an idea of something I could potentially include in my portfolio. Since I am treating learning as my job, I was able to complete this in a day (especially given most of it was review).

I did not look at the first 2 weeks of material, as I already have a solid handle on the topics listed in the lesson names.

Week 3 was basically a review of data security, accuracy, and cleaning. I completed the hands-on lab as practice, and found it to be very straightforward.

Week 4 was a good reminder of V, H, and X lookups.

I only had trouble with one of the practices. HLOOKUP didn’t work correctly on the provided file, which had the information in table format, but if I copied the cells into a non-table view, the formula worked fine.

Week 4 also contained Pivot Table information. Since beginning my Data Analytics Journey, Lookups and Pivot Tables are the only new-to-me Excel features I’ve encountered. I found the explanations, the syntax, and the examples in the materials clear and concise and easy to follow in the first half of week 4.

The second half of week 4 was harder, but not because of the content. I think Excel has updated since the course was made, and some of the options have changed, which is what made it difficult. I did eventually find what I was looking for though. I think that’s one of the issues with ever-changing interfaces and steps that I’ve encountered multiple times on this learning journey.

Week 5 was a project to put it all together. It consisted of cleaning the data, then creating pivot tables to show the distribution of types of vehicles across departments. It was a small data set and very easy to complete. I plan to search out similar projects to practice on.

If you’re looking for something to extend your Excel Skills, but you are already familiar with what I’ve mentioned here, you’ll want to look for something else.

If you’re just starting out, or haven’t opened Excel since the 90s, this is a great beginner/refresher!

#DataAnalytics #Excel #TransitioningTeacher

Featured below: One of the pivot tables from the Week 5 project