Excel Project

This week was all about Microsoft Excel. Our project involved 1000 exercise subjects with 21 different heart rate measurements and additional data like age and sex. We were to manipulate the data in various ways including using pivot tables. Not being exposed to Excel, except for my introductory computer course, I was at first a little intimidated. However, I jumped right in with both feet and started with the scavenger hunt. This is actually the best way for a novice such as myself to get acquainted with the material. It was definitely useful when it came time for the actual project because it provided a little "cheat sheet" to use throughout the process.


Once I started the project, I was surprised at how fast it went and realized that I was at the pivot table section before long. Looking back, I remembered more than I thought I would from my intro class. The biggest help feature that Mr. Olsen gave in his lecture was the F1 help key. I used this many times and I highly recommend it to everyone. I can't overstate this enough! It's easy to use and right at your finger tips. It gets you right to the information to answer your questions and is in easy to follow instructions. Again, the F1 help key is Excel-ent!


The pivot table part of the project was, for me, probably the most difficult. It definitely took the most time and that was due in part to not knowing anything about it. Also, formatting the data took several attempts. One click here, and EVERYTHING disappears! OMG! Yet, data recovery is simple in Excel. High praise to the "undo" key. Oh yea, did I mention the F1 help key? ;) Anyway, I learned a great deal from this project, especially pivot tables and their usefulness, and know it has real world use. I feel that the intimidation factor has disappeared.


Below is one of my tables. Looks good if I say so myself!