When it comes to summarizing individual fields (or variables), the most common functions are the SUM, AVERAGE, MIN and MAX functions. Here are the most commonly used functions you can use for data analysis: SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, and MAX Functions can do simple arithmetic operations like adding (SUM), or counting (COUNT) but can also do advanced statistical calculations like chi square and regressions. Microsoft Excel is known for its expansive list of pre-made calculations known as functions.
You can use filters, slicers, timelines, and sorting with pivot charts.Īgain, with this level of interactivity, pivot charts are used in combination with pivot tables to make a data dashboard. The difference with a normal chart in Excel is that Pivot charts are dynamic just like pivot tables. When you do this, the chart is called a Pivot chart. You can turn any pivot table into a chart such as a pi chart, column/bar chart, scatter plot or any one of the dozens of charts available in Excel. In fact, pivot tables are in most cases used as part of a data dashboard in Excel. These, together with the ability to sort the data provide an experience that can be likened to a data dashboard. Pivot tables also offer interactive features such filters, slicers and timelines for filtering the data in the table. Your summary values can then be disaggregated using date/time or text fields.įor example, you can build a pivot table summarizing household income, with average household income as the summary value, and disaggregate it by educational level. Using pivot tables, you can summarize data using counts (frequencies), mean, standard deviation, SUM and many other data analysis functions. Pivot tables allow you to summarize large volumes of structured data very easily by generating summary tables. Perhaps the most powerful and most useful data analysis feature in Excel is the pivot table feature. In this article, I will round up the top Excel features for data analysis. Choosing to work with Excel for data analysis is in most cases a very straight-forward decision to make since most people have at least worked with Excel for at some level. Excel even packs serious statistical analysis functionalities that come to par with the likes of SPSS and STATA. This owes to how easy it is to use Excel, from entering data to cleaning your data, and summarizing your data.
Microsoft Excel is one of, if not the number 1 data analysis software in the world in terms of popularity.