Analyzing Business Data with Excel (Paperback)

by Gerald Knight (Author)
Key Phrases: ending ratio, adjusted prediction, hourly forecasts, Goal Seek, Average of Order, Cancel Figure (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
As one of the most widely used desktop applications ever created, Excel is familiar to just about everyone with a computer and a keyboard. Yet most of us don't know the full extent of what Excel can do, mostly because of its recent growth in power, versatility, and complexity. The truth is that there are many ways Excel can help make your job easier-beyond calculating sums and averages in a standard spreadsheet.

Analyzing Business Data with Excel shows you how to solve real-world business problems by taking Excel's data analysis features to the max. Rather than focusing on individual Excel functions and features, the book keys directly on the needs of business users. Most of the chapters start with a business problem or question, and then show you how to create pointed spreadsheets that address common data analysis issues.

Aimed primarily at experienced Excel users, the book doesn't spend much time on the basics. After introducing some necessary general tools, it quickly moves into more specific problem areas, such as the following:

• Statistics
• Pivot tables
• Workload forecasting
• Modeling
• Measuring quality
• Monitoring complex systems
• Queuing
• Optimizing
• Importing data

If you feel as though you're getting shortchanged by your overall application of Excel, Analyzing Business Data with Excel is just the antidote. It addresses the growing Excel data analysis market head on. Accountants, managers, analysts, engineers, and supervisors-one and all-will learn how to turn Excel functionality into actual solutions for the business problems that confront them.

About the Author
Gerald Knight has nearly 30 years experience in the computer industry as a developer, teacher, and consultant. During an over twenty-year career at FedEx, he was a project leader and system architect working on imaging and revenue control systems. He has specialized in Excel development for the last ten years. Now retired, he consults and occasionally writes in Memphis, Tennessee.

Product Details

• Paperback: 262 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; illustrated edition edition (January 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596100736
• ISBN-13: 978-0596100735
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #428,987 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excel as taught from the business perspective, January 25, 2006

By	Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I like the viewpoint of this book; I have a business problem, now how do I attack that in Excel? So many books come at business problems from the perspective of a specific feature in the product. This book teaches the solution to a complex business data analysis problem through use of the features in Excel. Excellent!

It's a small book. The text is a little terse, but that's ok. Screenshots are used sparingly.

If what you want is a feature by feature breakdown of Excel then this book isn't for you. But if what you have is some data that you need to crunch and you don't know much about Excel then check this book out.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointed., December 28, 2006

By	Oppenheimer "Technical Book Review" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews

We bought this book back in mid January 2006.
It's been a year since the published date on
January 1, 2006, where are ALL the EXCEL data?

The XL_Applications.zip posted on 28-Aug-2006
on O'Reilly website consists of about 1/3 of
ALL the data/examples in the book.

The book has 12 chapters; however, not a single
chapter is provided with complete EXCEL data/
examples. What XL_Applications.zip contains
are some selected data/examples from chapter 3
to 8. Again, NOT a single chapter is provided
with ALL the EXCEL data/examples used in that
chapter.

I won't recommend this book until O'Reilly takes
"actions" to provide the readers with ALL the
EXCEL data/examples used in this book.

For reading a data analysis book w/o ALL the
data/examples to run it ourselves in EXCEL is
NOT useful at all.

You may wonder, how about type those data in?
No way, because most (if not all) of the data/
examples are very long and can only be shown
"partially" in the figures/screen shots!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exactly what I was looking for!!, March 29, 2006

By	M. Wheat (Michigan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a strategy analyst I'm always looking for concise ways to present data and make it automated and professional-looking without lots of code that none of my clients can use.

I agree with the previous reviewer, other books come at Excel and similar applications with a feature by feature breakdown so that in usage YOU have to work backwards to figure out how to apply software features to your problem.

This book is organized by business problem and then proceeds to breakdown how your problem applies to the software solution. There is very useful code in some of the models, but nothing horribly difficult to implement.

Excellent addition to my reference library. I've truly never seen a business data analysis book as well put together as this and I've been searching for years. You will not be disappointed.