Excel Project

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This week I dedicated to completing the excel project. It started out with completing the scavenger hunt which was filled with answers to questions about the basics of excel and also detailing some of the more advanced functions. At first it wasn't clear to me why this "scavenger hunt" had to be done, but as I started on the project itself, that paper I completed became much more useful.




The Project!
The first part of the project required you to download the master excel file from the e-learning website. I was relieved because I had an excel project in my head that I had assumed we would have to supply our own data. As I opened the file, I realized there were TONS OF NUMBERS!

It started out easy enough, manipulating the font and changing the alignment. I did come to some trouble with freezing the panes. I found the button to actually freeze the panes, but could not figure out why it would not freeze the panes I selected. After doing some googling, I found out that the selector on excel had to be on the area BELOW the panes you wanted frozen, simply highlighting the panes to be frozen wouldn't work.The entering the functions went smoothly. I could do the absolute and relative 
functions with ease. The area I ran into some trouble was the "IF" function and after an hour or so of rereading the instructions and seeking help elsewhere, I figured it out. After that I had to manipulate the workbook to print exactly as the instructions said and I figured it out quickly (Thanks to the videos!).


The Pivot tables were easy as well, it simply involved taking the raw data and presenting it they way the fitness center would like to see it.


What I learned
I knew some background of excel before coming into this project, but I also learned a substantial amount I think I can carry over to other classes and more importantly a future career! I vaguely knew about the conditional and relative functions, but I was stumped on how to deal with them. It simply involved inserting a "$" in front of the row and column you want to keep absolute. So Easy! The pivot tables were another thing I had no idea about. I liked the ease at which Microsoft Excel was able to recognize data and words and be able to allow me to categorize which data I wanted and filter the ones I didn't need out of it.

Screenshot taken by Brad Amidon

Here is the screenshot of my pivot table of the average percent increase in heart rate from start to finish. These were grouped in to age groups (by decade).