Customer Reviews

Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling (Bpg-Other)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The idea behind this book is great.
The book introduces and expands on many different 'useful' formulas and tools included within Excel.
The problems at the end of each chapter allows the reader to use what was just learned in developing spreadsheets to solve realistic accounting problems.
Even the 'above average' user of Excel, I believe, will learn from this book.
The CD even has an electronic version of the book, so you don't have to carry the book around everywhere.
The main problem: the CD STINKS !!!! It has MANY, MANY errors.
From forgetting to take into account given growth rates detailed in a problem (therefore yielding incorrect answers) to just plain sloppy copying of sheets (forgetting to delete the drawings and numbers not pertinent to the current sheet).
As said in a prior review, if an updated CD were to become available, with the CORRECT ANSWERS on it, this would be a definite 5 star.
(This said, perhaps finding the errors on the CD could be a means of developing your spreadsheets skills):)

This book is aimed at a level slightly higher than the total beginner. On page one, for instance he assumes that you understand the statement SUM(A5000:A5049) means. Then he points out that writing SUM(USSales) would make it easier to understand. He then describes how to name a range of cells -- Not exactly what I'd call advanced, but certainly above novice.

The first third, or so, of the book is on these kinds of slightly advanced procedures that you could get out of several Excell books. After that he kind of turns the approach around to things like "Estimating a Demand Curve." This is looking for what you want to do rather than just looking at a technique within Excell.

Many of his chapters have fairly sophisticated subjects, "Incorporating Qualitative Factors into Multiple Regression." In this chapter he then looks at multiple factors that might go into predicting things like predicting sales, predicting the Presidential race - with fairly surprising results.

In a couple of chapters he has a bit of fun, i.e. Chapter 73 is "Picking Your Fantasy Football Team."

Excell is quite a powerful package. It can be used for a lot of things beyond just filling out an expense account. In this book a lot of non traditional uses are described in a very light but informative manner. It is a very well done book.

I am not an advanced Excel user, but it is easy to find out that this book has many mistakes in coordinating the problem descriptions with the solutions, as well as typos in the book, when referring to certain cells. So, I do not know which of them should be corrected, but it is hard and time consuming, at least for a novice user, to understand what is going on. The solutions to advanced problems have no explanation, which on one hand is good because it makes you try to think...on the other hand though, it is such a disappointment to find out that the solutions you try to understand are wrong!! You can easily find it out by doublechecking with pen and paper...

The format of the book is great. It introduces business concepts and analysis techniques by real-life example. Many of these examples were directly applicable to my business. Whereas other texts like this teach you the theory, this book gets right down to real-world applications.

I hear what the others say about the CD. They do have a point. However, I entered all the data myself. I wanted to learn the material by plugging in my own data to figure out how stuff works. I can see how this book would be frustrating to someone who would rather not have to enter the formulas and dummy data.

The book iitself is good and could learn a great deal with a correct companion cd. But you can't include a CD in which all the problems and examples in the book differ from the cd. As with all software-learning books with accompaning cd's, it's crucial that you can perfom the necessary problems and examples correctly. This is not the case with Data Analysis and Business Modeling with Microsoft Excel by Wayne L. Winston. Small errors such as the cd Excel sheets being one row off from the book examples to missing data and incorrectly named companies (example: Cisco on the cd vs. Microsoft in the book) to large errors such as beginning of the month totals in sales examples being non-existent and data completely missing (in the Cisco/Microsoft example.) And these all occur w/in the first three chapters! Had the cd jived with the book, this would be a great resource. Since it is nearly impossible to do the activities on the cd, I rated this book poorly and will be taking it back and looking at other data analysis/modeling books.

Usually I avoid Microsoft publications like the plague. The world digs deep enough into its pocket to fund Bill's lifestyle as it is. However work demands have lead me into using areas of Excel I have rarely used. I found this book to be just the one to meet my needs. I like the way the book is organised into short chapters with lots of practical examples. Personally it could have done without the first seven chapters; at this level the reader should know these thoroughly. Nevertheless, there is enough meat in the rest to give me a enough grounding into becoming more proficient in the more "esoteric" areas of Excel.

I am an intermediate to advanced Excel user, so my review may reflect that level. As others have said, it looks like MS rushed this book to the market, evidenced by so many errata, which can be disappointing especially when the solution is wrong. On the other hand, there are some very interesting and genuine uses of various Excel functions to solve business problems.
I wouldn't recommend this book for beginners. If you're trying to learn Excel, this is not the book. It is not a book to teach excel, but a book to teach you what you can do with Excel to solve everyday problems, given you're familiar with the mechanics of excel.
I would recommend it with these caveats. And getting Walkenbach's book on Excel functions along with this would be very helpful in my opinion. Best of luck in your endeavors.

Overall this book was good. The first half of the book is pretty easy. It explains basic functions in excel and the author does a good job in explaining on how to do those functions. The second half of the book is kinda complicated because it contains a lot of statiscal functions like multiple regression, Two-Way ANOVA, bionomial and hypergeometric random variables and Weibull and beta distributions. Overall the book is great for anyone who is a business major or someone who owns a business.

Overall, I like this book, even though it is somewhat confusing, both in scope and in the target audience.
The techniques of "naming the range" or writing the "if" formula are certainly targeted for beginners, but most of statistical tools are normally used by more advanced users.
The worst thing, though, is that the book is full of errors, both typos and mistakes in problem solutions on the disk. I consider myself an intermediate user, so finding an error in "instructor solution" was more like an additional challenge for me, but for the beginner this could be very frustrating.
On the positive side - I really liked the idea of problems in the end of each chapter; so many books just give you the theory and then you do not know how to solve a real life problem. For most of chapters, I knew the tools, but still had to spend time figuring out the best way to implement it for problem solving.
Very practical book, good for intermediate users. Just be aware of the typos !

I readily admit that the mistakes in the CD are an impediment to learning, but I think the book still has value for users who are looking for the application to business. Many of the CD's chapters were fine and proved very useful and I don't agree with other reviewers that the CD is flawed beyond use. Users of this book can glean a great deal from the unflawed majority of the book.