1. Congratulations!
Congratulations! You've completed Data Analysis in Excel. Let me be the first to say that am proud of you. We tackled some tricky concepts and intermediate functionality in Excel, and you crushed it!
2. Chapter 1: Exploring data with PivotTables
In chapter 1, you learned about exploratory data analysis, and used PivotTables to unlock the secrets hiding in the sales data. You created calculated columns to make your own custom calculations that PivotTables can't do themselves. Then you used grouping features to segment data by customer types and number of licenses bought. Finally, you added some fancy slicers to the PivotTable by using the data and timeline filters.
3. Chapter 2: Intermediate logical functions
In chapter 2, you used logical functions like `SWITCH()`, `IF()`, `IFS()` and `CONCAT()` to create nested statements and customer segments. You used logical aggregate functions like `SUMIF()` and `SUMIFS()` to create sales summaries for various customer groups, and then compared the summaries to find out that average sales per customer was decreasing due to a shrinking share of enterprise customers. That was pretty cool!
4. Chapter 3: What if analysis
In chapter three, you learned about the importance of asking what if and how scenario analysis is useful for planning and setting targets. You created scenarios for projected sales, and used the Goal Seek tool to find the sales growth needed to hit $100,000 in monthly sales, and you used the Scenario manager and Data Table tools to analyze multiple scenarios easily and create sensitivity tables.
5. Chapter 4: Forecasting
Finally, in chapter 4 you created amazing forecasts with a bunch of techniques.
You learned how to use simple moving averages and weighted moving averages to forecast.
You also explored the various trendline options to get the best fitting forecast for your data.
And you used Forecast Sheets to create a sophisticated forecast of the sales data, and even replicated the formulas by hand to get a great sense of how it all works.
Finally, you learned about the importance of confidence intervals, precision and bias in forecasting.
6. Best of luck!
I hope you enjoyed learning all these things with me, and I sincerely wish you the best of luck on your learning journey, wherever it takes you. Until next time!