Exploring Excel

Coming into this class, I thought that I had a decent understanding of Excel. I knew how to enter data sets and create graphs of them with fancy colors. I had even understood how to make equations in the cells. To my knowledge, that was the extent of what excel could accomplish. However, from the very first lesson working on Excel, I was shocked to learn that all of the other icons and tabs could be used for something useful.

Being able to work hands-on with the program helped me learn the material quickly and effectively. One tool that I had very little understanding of was the basic function key. Letting Excel solve formulas such as standard deviations and averages for you and being able to apply that drag function for many cells was something that I had only dreamed of doing in this program. And the fact that you could display the data using conditional formatting and presenting it in certain orders blew my mind. I even was excited to learn how to simply make the spreadsheets look presentable by using themes and heading styles to organize it.

I do not know exactly what I will need Excel for in the future, but now I am aware that it can be used for a wide variety of tasks. Perhaps I will use it to calculate my personal finances or use it for a profession in which I need to record travel expenses or income statements. For now, however, I am using it in an academic setting for tasks such as keeping track of my grades and to creating data tables with graphs.