Microsoft Excel is a versatile spreadsheet software widely used for quantitative data analytics and visualization. While it may not be as specialized as statistical software like R or SPSS, Excel is accessible to a broad audience and offers powerful tools for handling and analyzing numerical data.
Excel can be used for quantitative data analytics and visualization in the following ways:
- Data entry and import: Excel is a straightforward platform for entering and organizing quantitative data. Users can manually input data into cells or import data from various sources, including databases, CSV files, and other spreadsheet formats.
- Data cleaning and transformation: Excel provides tools for cleaning and transforming data. Users can filter and sort data, remove duplicates, and perform basic data-cleaning operations. Excel also supports formula-based calculations, making creating new variables and performing data transformations easy.
- Descriptive statistics: Excel offers a range of built-in functions for calculating descriptive statistics, such as mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and more.
- Basic statistical analysis: While Excel is not as advanced as dedicated statistical software, it does offer basic statistical functions. Users can conduct t-tests, ANOVA, correlation, and regression analyses using built-in functions.
- Data visualization: Excel provides a variety of chart types for visualizing quantitative data. Users can create bar charts, line graphs, scatter plots, pie charts, and more. The Charts feature lets users quickly generate visual representations of their data to identify trends and patterns.
- PivotTables: PivotTables in Excel are potent tools for summarizing and analyzing large datasets. They allow users to dynamically rearrange and manipulate data, providing a quick way to gain insights and explore different perspectives.
- Dashboards: Excel can create dashboards that consolidate and present key metrics and visualizations on a single page. This is particularly useful for decision-makers needing a concise data trend overview.
- Data analysis ToolPak: Excel includes the Data Analysis ToolPak, an add-in that provides additional statistical analysis tools. With the ToolPak, users can perform more advanced analyses such as analysis of variance, regression, and exponential smoothing.
List of recommended resources #
For a broad overview #
This LabWrite Resource guide provides an easy-to-follow process of creating bar graphs and histograms in Excel.
Video: Data Visualization With Excel | Edureka
This webinar by edureka! on YouTube gives a broad overview of the art of data visualization with Excel. The tutorial covers creating various kinds of charts in Excel as well as customizing them for data analysis.
For in depth understanding #
Data Visualization in Excel: A Guide for Beginners, Intermediates, and Wonks
This book by Jonathan Schwabish provides a step-by-step guide to creating advanced and effective data visualizations in Excel. It is the perfect guide for anyone who wants to create better and more engaging data visualizations.
This hands-on guide by Michael Alexander and Dick Kusleika gives an in-depth study of the latest and most useful features of Microsoft Excel 365, one of the most commonly used data visualization tools.
Case study #
Information Management for Entomology Screening
This paper uses the data visualization tool Excel to analyze which data elements are used by the protocol and which column they reside on in the column view sheet. It can then be used to hide or display columns or construct formulas on the column view sheet. This enables building template sheets faster and minimizes errors in making column references.
This paper presents the Upstream Tariff Simulator, a simple Microsoft Excel–based tool designed to help policy makers answer questions pertaining to tariff reform.
