Posted: 8/17/22

We've seen a lot of data analysis tools over the years.  Software that promises big insights and business intelligence that will transform your work life.  Many of those analysis products are really great, but none are as "easy" and universal as good 'ole Microsoft Excel.

We have heard many times from colleagues and friends that they are intimidated by Excel or they just don't "do data".  We believe that most people grossly underestimate their abilities when it comes to Excel and just need a confidence boost and a few real life examples to follow. There are infinite resources available online for Excel training.  Don't be afraid of Excel or its more advanced functions like pivot tables. The time you take to learn these functions will pay you in saved time later.   To get you started, we give you a quick how to on pivot tables:  

• Problem: You have a big spreadsheet where you need to group and add, count or average a grouping of data

  • Example: You have a detailed spreadsheet of 311 cases for the month of July from Miami-Dade County and you want to analyze it.

  • Solution: The Pivot Table.

  • Let us show you: Pivot Tables are so important to us, we have created a quick how to video of our own to share*.

 *big shout out to Miami-Dade County for their Open Data portal and for a great big 311 dataset.