Excel Project

The excel project forced us to analyze and manipulate data in a way that can be useful in the business environment. The set of data that we were given was extremely useful, because it is the kind of data that could be as a sports journalist, which is my chosen profession. By using the simple max heart rate formula, I can see if the athlete's death was due to him over exerting himself on the field.
   The most fascinating function of excel is the logical test function, which helped me recognize whether the subject's highest heart rate was able to meet or exceed the target heart rate. Before this project, I had never heard of that particular function and it was very complex in comparison to the rest of the tasks that we were assigned. However, once I set the parameters for the logical test, it was immensely satisfying to simply look for "yes" or "no" as opposed to looking at numbers on the spreadsheet and possibly getting it wrong. I also like once you input a formula in a cell that you can drag the formula down through the rest of the rows as opposed to having to input the formula manually into every cell.
     The pivot tables were interesting to play with, in particular the Average Increase pivot table. Due to the fact that we had to group the ages, it was hard to find at first, but once found it made the data much easier to understand for the owner of the fitness center. This project was much more detailed oriented compared to the presentation project, in that you really had to follow the direction or your data would end up being skewed significantly. It was amazing seeing the when the Percent Increase column changed from a decimal to a percentage what a difference in made in the data.