Minneapolis Public Schools

Take your Excel skills to the next level. Go beyond what others know, equipping you with advanced functions to efficiently analyze and manipulate data. Explore the advantages of these functions in various contexts, enhancing your productivity and data insights.

Unit 1

Sum and Count

Excel offers powerful functions for data analysis and manipulation. Core functions provide fundamental calculations. However, the real value lies in advanced functions. Explore functions that enable conditional summation, allowing for complex data analysis and reducing manual calculations. We also look at dynamic summaries that adjust with filtering, crucial for analyzing filtered datasets. We move one to functions that are essential for data quality checks, helping identify data completeness and empty cells. Lastly, we investigate functions that are used for identifying data patterns and frequencies based on specific criteria. Proficiency in these functions streamlines data analysis, improves efficiency, and facilitates informed decision-making.

Unit 2

Error Checking & Dates

Mastering Excel's error-handling functions is crucial for robust analysis. We investigate functions that allow you to gracefully manage formula errors, preventing them from disrupting your entire dataset and enabling you to provide alternative, sensible values. We then move on to functions that can enhance formula readability, making complex calculations easier to follow. Finally, we explore the ability to extract specific date components which opens up detailed analysis of time-series data. Combined with real-time date and time information, you can perform precise time duration calculations giving you the power to perform sophisticated, time-sensitive analyses. Proficiency in these areas ensures your spreadsheets are not only accurate but also insightful, providing a competitive edge in data interpretation.

Unit 3

Text

Unlock the power of text manipulation to extract specific parts of text strings – essential for data cleaning and formatting. These functions are your go-to tools for isolating relevant information from messy or inconsistent data. Standardize text for consistent analysis, manage text lengths and eliminate unwanted spaces, which is essential for consistent formulas. Finally, we examine functions that enable you to combine text strings, creating custom labels and summaries. These skills are fundamental for anyone working with text-based data, transforming raw information into organized, analyzable insights.

Unit 4

Lookup

Excel’s new Lookup functions offer significant improvements over previous methods. Elevate your skills so you can provide a more powerful and flexible alternative to your current lookups, offering enhanced error handling and versatility. Learn how to reference cells or ranges based on text strings, often used to dynamically find tables or ranges by name. Furthermore, other advanced functions allow you to reference cells or ranges based on their location within a dataset, rather than by specific cell addresses or table names. These functions provide a deeper level of control and flexibility in data retrieval and analysis, making your spreadsheets more dynamic and adaptable.