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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Mastering Data Analysis in Excel by Duke University

4.2
stars
3,919 ratings

About the Course

Important: The focus of this course is on math - specifically, data-analysis concepts and methods - not on Excel for its own sake. We use Excel to do our calculations, and all math formulas are given as Excel Spreadsheets, but we do not attempt to cover Excel Macros, Visual Basic, Pivot Tables, or other intermediate-to-advanced Excel functionality. This course will prepare you to design and implement realistic predictive models based on data. In the Final Project (module 6) you will assume the role of a business data analyst for a bank, and develop two different predictive models to determine which applicants for credit cards should be accepted and which rejected. Your first model will focus on minimizing default risk, and your second on maximizing bank profits. The two models should demonstrate to you in a practical, hands-on way the idea that your choice of business metric drives your choice of an optimal model. The second big idea this course seeks to demonstrate is that your data-analysis results cannot and should not aim to eliminate all uncertainty. Your role as a data-analyst is to reduce uncertainty for decision-makers by a financially valuable increment, while quantifying how much uncertainty remains. You will learn to calculate and apply to real-world examples the most important uncertainty measures used in business, including classification error rates, entropy of information, and confidence intervals for linear regression. All the data you need is provided within the course, all assignments are designed to be done in MS Excel, and you will learn enough Excel to complete all assignments. The course will give you enough practice with Excel to become fluent in its most commonly used business functions, and you’ll be ready to learn any other Excel functionality you might need in the future (module 1). The course does not cover Visual Basic or Pivot Tables and you will not need them to complete the assignments. All advanced concepts are demonstrated in individual Excel spreadsheet templates that you can use to answer relevant questions. You will emerge with substantial vocabulary and practical knowledge of how to apply business data analysis methods based on binary classification (module 2), information theory and entropy measures (module 3), and linear regression (module 4 and 5), all using no software tools more complex than Excel....

Top reviews

TB

Nov 16, 2021

I like and appreciate courses provided through Coursera.This course is very interesting and valuable for those whose jobs do have relevance with data management .God bless Coursera and Duke University

JE

Oct 30, 2015

The course deserves a 5-star rating because: (1) content is relevant, (2) the professor is concise and possesses great teaching skills, and (3) the learning modules are applicable to daily problems.

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526 - 550 of 935 Reviews for Mastering Data Analysis in Excel

By John S

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Apr 10, 2017

Very useful knowledge in this course. Although, some of the quizzes require some small fixes, and there are minor mistakes in some lectures.

By Pham T G

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Nov 13, 2015

Overall, the course is great except for some minor inconvenience of the lecture. Some concepts are not carefully explain like incidence etc

By Nelly R

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Nov 21, 2015

This course is very good! The inconvenient is the lack of exercices, however, the explanation are clear and relevant; we go to the basics.

By Anil K N

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Jun 3, 2019

The course overall is fantastic but I feel that they should teach more through the excel spreadsheets than by using MS paint application.

By Jesús P R

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Nov 20, 2017

Very good course. It requires concentration, time and dedication but it is really satisfying after you learn and apply all the content.

By Chen C P

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Apr 30, 2017

Good for learning statistical analysis using real examples (bank credit card application) and hands on the data in the final project!

By John K

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Jan 10, 2022

Good course but quite difficult to follow along with all the detail. The templates given for the calculations were excellent!

By Carlos V M

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Feb 7, 2016

Really good course, I think the most value is at the end when you are able to apply the concept learned in the final assignment

By Georgi

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Jun 28, 2017

Sometimes it was too complicated. At some moment it seemed to be too deep in statistics. But anyway very good to participate.

By Gerardo O

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Nov 21, 2015

It will be better adding examples related with engineering cases (this is for technical people in any branch of engineering).

By Bharat M

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Aug 22, 2020

Gets too complex at times. Otherwise a solid data analysis course with quite a bit of focus on the statistics part as well.

By Boris D

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Apr 29, 2021

nice course but little bit too hard on statistic and mathematics, more on excel will be the best!

thanks for this course

By chong d

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Sep 17, 2019

It would be better if there has more explanation for the tests at the end, since the test neared the end is very hard.

By Tomer W

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Nov 25, 2019

The content is interesting and useful, however, the quizzes and tests are not always aligned with the course level.

By chen y

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Nov 27, 2015

good course for combining stats and excel, but it is difficult for new learners with no knowledges on stats at all

By Paul E H

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Feb 20, 2016

I found this course to be very challenging, but I am grateful for the knowledge and the new perspective. Thanks!

By Maharafa I C

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Nov 10, 2015

The course include structured elements and very usefull information to turn you quickly from beginner to master.

By Kang J N

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Jul 27, 2019

There were some inconsistencies between the answers provided in the quizzes and the answers in my excel sheets.

By Humberto J

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Aug 21, 2017

Good course, teaches you the framework to do analysis, not so much the design of tools in Excel. Great material

By elvis a

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Feb 6, 2019

Improvement on my Excel skills to analyse data better. I wish the organisation will be much better. Thank you!

By Javier V

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May 3, 2018

Nice course, could've been better explained or provide more regression models (like logistic) but good overall

By Seshadri

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Jan 5, 2016

I wish the duration between each week was a bit more and there was an option to chat with the faculty directly

By Smitha

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Nov 8, 2015

More worksheets and examples would help :) the course is quite dense in terms of the number of topics covered

By Shiv P

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Nov 22, 2016

Good Course so far. But lacks indepth explanation. Courses such as probability need to be taken prior to this

By Erica M

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Apr 9, 2016

Very heavy on the stats front, not so much on utilizing Excel but I learned some useful things in this class.