Chevron Left
Back to Mastering Data Analysis in Excel

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

4.2
stars
3,924 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.

Filter by:

551 - 575 of 938 Reviews for Mastering Data Analysis in Excel

By Kang J N

•

Jul 27, 2019

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

By Humberto J

•

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

•

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

•

May 3, 2018

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

By Seshadri

•

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

•

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

•

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

•

Apr 9, 2016

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

By Łukasz C

•

Aug 21, 2016

This is not an easy course and some concepts/tasks weren't clearly addressed.

But the instructor is great!

By Kelly D

•

Mar 6, 2017

Solid class focused on the mechanics of building and evaluating binary classification models using Excel

By Dauren Y

•

Jan 11, 2018

Finals are a bit stressing, restructuring of the load may be needed to make it more evenly distributed

By SATEESHKUMAR I

•

Oct 18, 2016

really use full,but before this cousre we need to acquire some mathematical and statstical knowledge.

By Ji, C

•

Jan 19, 2018

Very helpful to understand basic data analysis. The tasks in the final week are pretty challenging.

By Colin M

•

Sep 23, 2017

Difficult learning curve, but cool concepts. I'd recommend a basic stats class before taking this.

By Cliff E

•

May 23, 2017

Very challenging but helpful! I will hold on to and reference the course material for a long time.

By Hubert D

•

Jan 31, 2016

It's not only basic Excel course but you can learn a lot of useful Excel functions like log or ln.

By Michael N

•

Jul 18, 2017

This course is hard and fast paced. Expect to stretch yourself and retrace steps to complete it.

By Samantha C

•

Sep 20, 2016

I work with excel and thousands of lines of data everyday. I found this class to be challenging

By Chao Z

•

Nov 19, 2015

Good topic and resources to learn. However the business terminologies sometimes are confusing.

By Alan W

•

Aug 14, 2017

Very informative, but did not include a lot of analysis work with Excel. Not what I expected.

By Sambhrant S

•

Feb 2, 2016

I believe pivot tables also plays a big part in Excel, wish they could incorporate that too.

By The Q O I

•

Dec 16, 2015

Very challenging and wish there were more exercises throughout to strengthen understanding.

By Geovanna

•

Feb 14, 2016

The training course excellent however I would like to find the quiz for the week number 1

By Govind S

•

Feb 7, 2016

Very helpful course. Intense concepts covered and good examples to master them. Thanks!

By Juan P A

•

Dec 14, 2015

Amazing to get a grasp on the concepts! Might need further inmersion on the Excel area