Mastering Data Analysis in Excel

Formulate data questions, explore and visualize large datasets, and inform strategic decisions.In this Specialization, you'll learn to frame business challenges as data questions. You'll use powerful tools and methods such as Excel, Tableau, and MySQL to analyze data, create forecasts and models, design visualizations, and communicate your insights. In the final Capstone Project, you'll apply your skills to explore and justify improvements to a real-world business process.The Capstone Project focuses on optimizing revenues from residential property, and Airbnb, our Capstone's official Sponsor,

( 102 Reviews )

Created by: Jana Schaich Borg

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Overall Score : 88 / 100

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Course Description

Important: The focus of this course is on math - specifically, data-analysis concepts and methods - not on Excel for its own sake. We use Excel to do our calculations, and all math formulas are given as Excel Spreadsheets, but we do not attempt to cover Excel Macros, Visual Basic, Pivot Tables, or other intermediate-to-advanced Excel functionality.This course will prepare you to design and implement realistic predictive models based on data. In the Final Project (module 6) you will assume the role of a business data analyst for a bank, and develop two different predictive models to determine which applicants for credit cards should be accepted and which rejected. Your first model will focus on minimizing default risk, and your second on maximizing bank profits. The two models should demonstrate to you in a practical, hands-on way the idea that your choice of business metric drives your choice of an optimal model.The second big idea this course seeks to demonstrate is that your data-analysis results cannot and should not aim to eliminate all uncertainty. Your role as a data-analyst is to reduce uncertainty for decision-makers by a financially valuable increment, while quantifying how much uncertainty remains. You will learn to calculate and apply to real-world examples the most important uncertainty measures used in business, including classification error rates, entropy of information, and confidence intervals for linear regression.All the data you need is provided within the course, all assignments are designed to be done in MS Excel, and you will learn enough Excel to complete all assignments. The course will give you enough practice with Excel to become fluent in its most commonly used business functions, and you'll be ready to learn any other Excel functionality you might need in the future (module 1).The course does not cover Visual Basic or Pivot Tables and you will not need them to complete the assignments. All advanced concepts are demonstrated in individual Excel spreadsheet templates that you can use to answer relevant questions. You will emerge with substantial vocabulary and practical knowledge of how to apply business data analysis methods based on binary classification (module 2), information theory and entropy measures (module 3), and linear regression (module 4 and 5), all using no software tools more complex than Excel.

Time: 29h

Instructor Details

Jana Schaich Borg

4.4 Rating
102 Reviews

Jana Schaich Borg, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist at Duke University. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University. She develops new methods for inferring network properties of high-dimensional multi-modal neural data, and is a prominent researcher in the areas of social behavior and social cognition. Dr. Schaich Borg is a leading member of many interdisciplinary teams that combine cutting edge technologies with innovative approaches to overcome what seem like intractable challenges. She is also an active advocate for training programs that teach scientists how to apply their research to world issues, and education programs that teach entrepreneurs and philanthropists how to support structures that foster disruptive innovation in biomedical science. Her career is dedicated to making sure Big Data helps solve social problems.

Reviews

4.4

102 total reviews

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By GBT on 24-Feb-19

This course has more holes than swiss cheese. The instructor makes major leaps without thoroughly explaining things. A lot of times when I started to do a problem set it felt like I had missed 2 or 3 lectures. But I had not, the instructor just leaves you to figure a lot out on your own. The videos are choppy often containing errors that sometimes have a note stating the accurate information. The excel sheets are posted at the end of the lecture as opposed to the beginning. But they have nothing to do with the lectures other than the calculus behind the formulas. So you have to go through cell by cell to figure out what the hell the instructor did and what calculus was being used. I appreciate how the instructor combined a lot of material here but unless you are fresh of calculus 3 or several statistics class then this is complexly crap course.

By Thomas S on 12-Feb-19

Horrible instruction. Little to no motivation is supplied for each topic. Moreover, the statistical concepts taught in this course are not preceded by preliminary concepts. For instance, I believe it is not until the course is almost over that the concept of a random variable is discussed. Do not waste your time with this course if your goal is to be more skilled in excel.

By Kenneth W on 12-Oct-18

Great course. My one caveat would be that, as other reviews have stated, the name of the course is misleading. In my opinion, this course isn't nearly about Excel as much as it is about probability and statistical analysis. If you haven't taken classes and don't have any experience with these, you will be in for a very rough ride. However, Professor Eggers does a good job of guiding you through it and gives you the resources you need to succeed. It will undoubtedly be tough, but if you are persistent and believe in yourself, you will succeed. And you will come out on the other side better for the wear. Cheers!

By Krishna K on 18-Feb-18

1. The scribbling on the videos is not legible. How do you expect students to learn when we can't read that scribble.2. There is not enough detail within the instruction to complete the quizzes and final exam. I had to switch sessions multiple times in order to do additional research outside the course to complete the quizzes and exams.3. This course needs a re-do. Please read what students are saying in the forum and on other MOOC review websites. The reviews for this class are NOT good. Please make changes. I will NOT recommend anyone to take this class

By Hardik M on 4-Mar-19

The course is great as it allows you to apply all the concepts taught in scenarios that are really practical. The resources supplied with the course are extremely useful,and all in all the course is good for anyone trying to understand data analytics.

By Achmad R A on 21-May-19

its a good course but maybe in the future you can add another case for participants to build another model beside bank credit model

By Soukaina K on 2-May-19

Excellent course, I learnt a lot and really enjoyed it. Definitely recommend !

By valentine M on 12-Apr-19

Great course improves data analysis insight

By Marcela E on 21-Jun-19

es un curso que te va a ayudar a saber manejar excel y ademas de aprender los temas bsicos aprenders de temas como teste de modelos.

By Rajat K on 6-Apr-19

great course got great knowledge about the models used for data analysis

By Doug J on 29-Apr-19

Very comprehensive. Lot of theory and practical. My request would be to add a week focusing on a couple models and a couple methods to select metrics and validate confidence.

By Amy H on 13-Mar-19

This is overall a great course for learning how to use Excel to analyse and manage data. However, the topics covered do not prepare you for the final project. I had to do a lot of trial and error, and research how to complete certain tasks, as the information given in the lessons is not substantial enough to complete the final project. On the plus side, this forced me to figure things out on my own and and taught me a lesson in perseverance. Coming from a humanities background, this course showed me the basics of using Excel and I now feel comfortable using Excel to analyse and manage large data sets.

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