Harry

“Dataquest not only teaches you the fundamentals, but also teaches you how to keep learning…so you’re never stuck.”

Harry Robinson

Head of Business Intelligence @Philips

Course overview

This course is part of the “Introduction to Data Analysis with Excel” skill path, which we designed for those seeking the practical skills in Excel to perform data analysis and visualization — and ultimately help organizations make better-informed decisions. We designed it for aspiring data professionals with little experience and learners who use basic Excel in their daily jobs and want to enhance their skills.

In this course, you’ll learn how to develop business insights using PivotTables, how to identify trends using time-series analysis, and how to create data visualizations to tell meaningful stories. You’ll also learn how to summarize and visualize relationships between categorical and quantitative variables.

Best of all, you’ll learn by doing — you’ll practice and get feedback directly in the browser.

Key skills

  • Using PivotTables to analyze data and discover business insights
  • Working with time-series data to identify trends over time
  • Confirming a relationship between an independent and dependent variable using linear regression
  • Estimating the sensitivity of an output to given inputs

Course outline

Analyzing Data in Excel [6 lessons]

Variance Analysis in Excel 1h

Lesson Objectives
  • Roll up and drill down on a dataset using PivotTables
  • Identify differences to budget or previous period
  • Create custom groupings within a defined hierarchy

Trend Analysis in Excel 1h

Lesson Objectives
  • Resample time series data using PivotTables
  • Visualize trends
  • Perform basic forecasting

Exploratory Data Analysis in Excel 1h

Lesson Objectives
  • Summarize data with proportion tables and descriptive statistics
  • Visualize the distributions of two or more categories
  • Explore the relationship of two continuous variables with correlations

Confirmatory Data Analysis in Excel 1h

Lesson Objectives
  • Compare the difference in means between two groups for statistical significance
  • Build a basic linear regression model
  • Visualize important statistics concepts using Excel

Business and Financial Modeling in Excel 1h

Lesson Objectives
  • Estimate the sensitivity of an output to given inputs
  • Build a scenario manager to anticipate possible outcomes
  • Perform what-if analysis to estimate a project’s breakeven point

Guided Project: Analyzing Retail Sales 1h

Lesson Objectives
  • Combine and profile data sources
  • Analyze and visualize trends in sales over time
  • Analyze changes over time at varying levels of a hierarchy
  • Model future business scenarios for impact on profitability

Projects in this course

Guided Project: Analyzing Retail Sales

Work with retail sales data to explore trends and relationships. Build basic models to confirm the statistical significance of your insights.

The Dataquest guarantee

Guarantee

Dataquest has helped thousands of people start new careers in data. If you put in the work and follow our path, you’ll master data skills and grow your career.

Money

We believe so strongly in our paths that we offer a full satisfaction guarantee. If you complete a career path on Dataquest and aren’t satisfied with your outcome, we’ll give you a refund.

Master skills faster with Dataquest

Go from zero to job-ready

Go from zero to job-ready

Learn exactly what you need to achieve your goal. Don’t waste time on unrelated lessons.

Build your project portfolio

Build your project portfolio

Build confidence with our in-depth projects, and show off your data skills.

Challenge yourself with exercises

Challenge yourself with exercises

Work with real data from day one with interactive lessons and hands-on exercises.

Showcase your path certification

Showcase your path certification

Impress employers by completing a capstone project and certifying it with an expert review.

Grow your career with
Dataquest.

97%
of learners recommend
Dataquest for career advancement
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$30k
Average salary boost
for learners who complete a path
Aaron

Aaron Melton

Business Analyst at Aditi Consulting

“Dataquest starts at the most basic level, so a beginner can understand the concepts. I tried learning to code before, using Codecademy and Coursera. I struggled because I had no background in coding, and I was spending a lot of time Googling. Dataquest helped me actually learn.”

Jessi

Jessica Ko

Machine Learning Engineer at Twitter

“I liked the interactive environment on Dataquest. The material was clear and well organized. I spent more time practicing then watching videos and it made me want to keep learning.”

Victoria

Victoria E. Guzik

Associate Data Scientist at Callisto Media

“I really love learning on Dataquest. I looked into a couple of other options and I found that they were much too handhold-y and fill in the blank relative to Dataquest’s method. The projects on Dataquest were key to getting my job. I doubled my income!”

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