Guerrilla Data Analysis Using Microsoft Excel

Bill Jelen, MrExcel and Oz du Soleil of Excel on Fire, two of the leading Excel channels on YouTube, joined forces to write a unique book to help you get the most from Excel and combat bad data. Guerrilla Data Analysis Using Microsoft Excel: Excel Skirmishes and Conquering Crap Data Third Ed. goes beyond Excel tips & tricks and includes real world warnings and case studies. The book opens with a review of Excel basics and moves on to show you: Pivot tables, Conditional formatting, Power Query, and Dynamic Arrays. And then there are what the authors call skirmishes: those aspects of working with Excel and data that aren’t directly Excel but are real world challenges that make your Excel work more difficult. The list of skirmishes include: The perils of diving into a project before checking data quality. Accepting the reality that data is never 100% clean, and deciding if your dataset is clean enough. Identifying duplicate records that will ruin your analysis. Deciding on your strategy based on a one-&-done need vs. an ongoing automated need. When asked about the motivation for this book, Oz replied: “this is for the person who’s been thrown into the fire with Excel and data. They may not have a background for this work but they still have to perform because the world doesn’t wait for you to graduate from beginner to intermediate and then to advanced. No. You have to perform and deliver.” In other words, GDA3 is a survival guide whether you’re new to Excel or a longtime professional who needs a reference guide. The book is light and quick, giving you bite-sized lessons, but going deep on critical topics like pivot tables and Power Query.