Data Science Dojo presents Business Data Analysis with Excel

Business data presents a challenge for the data analyst. Business data is often aggregated, recorded over time, and tends to exhibit autocorrelation. Additionally, and most problematically, the amount of business data is usually quite limited. These characteristics lead to a situation where many of the tools in the analyst’s tool belt (e.g., regression) aren’t ideal for the task. Despite these challenges, proper analysis of business data represents a fundamental skill required of Business/Data Analysts, Product/Program Managers, and Data Scientists.

At this meetup presenter Dave Langer will show how to get started analyzing business data in a robust way using Excel – no programming or statistics required!

Dave will cover the following during the presentation:

• The types of business data and why business data is a unique analytical challenge.

• Requirements for robust business data analysis.

• Using histograms, running records, and process behavior charts to analyze business data.

• The rules of trend analysis.

• How to properly compare business data across time, organizations, geographies, etc.Where you can learn more about the tools and techniques.

**Excel spreadsheets will be made available via GitHub for those folks who wish to follow along during the presentation.

David is a veteran BI, analytics, and data science professional. He manages a team of technical Program Managers that own the mission-critical data warehouse, BI, big data, and analytics platforms used to run Microsoft’s $10+ Billion supply chain. While obsessed about everything in Data Science, Dave’s current passions are text analytics, event log mining, and mathematical programming. David obtained a BA in Economics and a MS in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

**Pizza and refreshments will be served.