Customer Reviews

Excel 2007 Data Analysis For Dummies

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4 star:		(2)
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I am a big fan of the Dummies books. I bought a ton of them and managed to learn a lot of good stuff this way. The author, Stephen Nelson, covers this occasionally not so simple subject in a very user friendly way right in line with the Dummies series tradition.

Keep in mind what this book' s purpose is about. It is essentially an Excel manual specializing on a specific set of functions to conduct certain types of data analysis. It is not a book about statistical analysis or data analysis. The author teaches you how to use those functions and Excel capabilities, but he won't teach you much about data analysis and statistics. For that you will need specific statistics books written by statistics professors. This book instead is a "how to" guide written by a CPA. And, given the book's purpose that's just fine.

Also, before buying any such book make sure you really study the table of content. This is to ensure the book covers what you need to learn. Different books covering the same overall subject (using Excel to conduct data analysis) could very well cover a fairly different set of topics with not much overlap between them. This is because Excel has so much width to its capabilities, you can easily take it in different directions.

When I looked at the table of content, I noted that Stephen Nelson is huge on Pivot Tables. He probably wrote the only book on data analysis dedicating a full four chapters to Pivot Tables. That was fine with me since I really wanted to learn about them.

In any case, if the book's table of content covers what you want to learn on the subject this is a very good book.

I really like this book. It is written in very plain and easy to follow format. Anyone with any Excel knowledge at all will find it remedial at first however once you get to the part that interests you, it's great. It is easy to follow and informative. The author also uses humor to lighten it up, tech manuals can be very dry. This one is not.

I recomend the book for anyone just starting to do analysis with Excel. You will get your money's worth and will be able to finish the book without dying from bordom.

Good book if you're not so great with building charts etc. in excel, funny too! Plus you get to find out where some of the stuff you're used to in excel '03 went to.

The book gives you a good start in Excel and covers most common topics. I haven't gone through it completely but looks good so far.It arrived on time and in good condition.

I haven't jumped right into it... but just the quick review is very interesting. There are lots of examples and the breakdown of the book is very logical.