Preparing a Spreadsheet Title: “Data Analysis and Visualization: Creating a Spreadsheet with Two Unique Data Sets”

Preparing a Spreadsheet
Begin the planning of a new spreadsheet that contains two unique data sets that can be found online and are recent (i.e., the past six months). These two data sets should be on different topics. For example, sports scores and then the cost of fuel. Place each dataset onto its own worksheet and rename the sheets to represent the content of each sheet. Example datasets are:
The temperature of your city for the past 5-10 days
Scored points per game of your favorite sports team for their past 5-10 games
The amount you paid for gas for the past few months
Dow Jones or similar financial market
Most anything else you can tabulate or can track. Be creative, but be sure to provide the link.
Before starting, plan how the data is to be structured. Ask yourself these questions:
What is the purpose of the spreadsheet? e.g., a budget, tracking sales, analyzing numbers, creating charts for presentations, etc.
Determine the type of data you are working with. Is it currency, percentage, or larger number needing a comma or decimals?
How many decimal places are needed? Be consistent.
How is the information to be organized? By time? (day, month, or quarter?) By category? (income, expenses, etc.)
What text labels are needed?
What text and cell formatting should be used? (bold, indents, underline, font color, cell COLOR shading (a little is good, but not too much), etc.) 
What data needs to be summarized?
Will formulas or functions be used to derive this information? e.g., total (sum), average, maximum/minimum value, payment, etc.
Is a chart needed to enable the visualization of trends?
Requirements
Create a workbook with two worksheets, each containing a recent data set.
Name the two sheets.
Label all values. Tip: the text labels cannot be entered into the same cell as the numbers.
Apply formatting such as bold text, colors, etc., as appropriate. Avoid colors that make the text hard to read.
Include the hyperlinks to the data set on the sheets.
Save your workbook in .xlsx format.
Upload your file here. While this is ungraded, it is a required activity that must be completed ahead of progressing to the next module.

Comments

Leave a Reply