My Analytical journey (as I like to call it) began a few months ago. I took an internship with Side Hustle. The internship lasted 6 weeks and immediately after, I enrolled into the Bootcamp and that also lasted 6 weeks. In this post, I'll give a breakdown of the process; what I have learned so far, some reviews on my former dashboards and a few resources.

Getting Started: Excel

The internship was a very detailed one. We had 2 instructors. One of the tutors took us on the fundamentals of Excel, while the other took us on Power Bi. In this article, I will majorly be talking about the Excel aspect.

Prior to this internship, I had some knowledge on Excel as I had once used it to account for the expenses of an organisation I was working with. When we began classes, it all looked so new to me, seeing how Excel could be used for Data Analysis, Financial modelling, to create detailed and comprehensive dashboards, etc. I was unaware of the extent to which Excel could be used. Our initial classes were basic and introductory, by introductory I mean; we were taught about rows and columns, what Microsoft Excel is and what it is used for, how to input data so you can properly work on it, limitations of Excel, where to get data from, and some other fundamental topics.

Here are some key takeaways from our lessons:

• Microsoft Excel is an extremely handy tool that is used for various reasons such as: to calculate and format data, Data Analysis, to create comprehensive dashboards and visualize data, to sort and organize data through the use of spreadsheets and so on.

• Microsoft Excel has 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns

• Before you begin working on your data, ensure you have it properly sorted, duplicates removed (if necessary), and ensure the data is accurate e.g, you are working on a data set reporting all the Covid cases recorded in the year 2022, and the total of the Population column is giving you 9 billion, you should maybe doublecheck because the current world population is estimated to be 7.8 billion.

• There is so much you can do with Excel, always try not to limit yourself.

Then we went a bit deeper and we started exploring functions such as; IF, OR, AND, V LOOKUP, H LOOKUP, SUM, COUNT, COUNT IF and many more. If you are currently learning about these functions, I searched for comprehensive playlists and resources you can use to understand them better. Some of them really helped me a lot when I was starting out and even now, they are still helping me. Check this google drive to access them. drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UXMqc2Spb0_..

The First Project

Now during the internship, we had access to a dashboard. Your dashboard was personal to you as it reflected your progress, achievements, and it was the way you could access the lessons uploaded by tutors. This made it easier because you could watch the videos at any time, as long as it was within the week it was uploaded. Due to this, our first capstone project came a little after we had started the internship.

I remember when I initially saw our capstone project, I practically screamed! it was long (I won't lie, it looked scary) and even though I had not gone through it, I was already thinking it would be extremely difficult. Turns out, I was wrong. All the questions were attemptable and they were things we had been taught. I and my team got to work. I was the team lead and hence, distributed the tasks. We were given 3 questions. To be able to attempt these questions, we were given a dataset. Below is a picture of the dataset Question 1 looked something like this:

Using Sales Data 1

1. Extract sales made from Kentucky, California and Florida under furniture and office Supplies (Also show their corresponding order id, order date, Ship Date, Customer name, Sub category and product name)

2. For all kinds of Xerox products, extract their respective sales and customer names

3. Find the average total sales for (question 2) if sales is not equal to 500

4. For the customers names in (question 2), split it to first and last name (dont use flash fill and text to column)

5. Find the total sales for each of the Ship modes

6. Find the average sales for each of the Regions

Then there were 2 other questions given. We answered question 1 by first extracting a table containing sales made from the different regions selected. My teammate did this by converting to a table and applying a filter. Although an easier method would be to use the VLOOKUP function.

To get answers to the other questions, we majorly used the average if functions and sum if functions. We ensured that in all situations, our table contained only the necessary data and that was how we attempted this question. It was nice working with a team because we were new to it and uncertain about a number of things but reasoning together helped clear a lot of doubts.

Some Key Points I Got at the End of the Excel Classes

• Excel is not very difficult. All you need is the right learning technique and an 'I can do spirit'

• Sometimes there is more than one way to achieve something e.g in our case, instead of creating a table and filtering the data, we could have used the VLOOKUP function.

• Neatness matters. No matter how huge the dataset is or how many things you have to do on it, always ensure that it looks presentable when submitting it or presenting it.

• Always check the accuracy of your work. Excel may flag a cell, indicating to you that there may be an error. Never forget to cross-check and be sure you are on the right track

• Understanding fundamentals is very necessary to your progress.

Summary

That is how I got into Excel. After we had submitted our project and it was checked, we received an A grade💃 I would definitely recommend to any enthusiast of Data Analytics or anyone looking to get started to take the Side Hustle Internship. The world of data is wide but all you need to do is take a step and the journey begins. If you would like to know more about the internship, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd definitely be glad to help.

My profile:linkedin.com/in/anuoluwapo-mokuolu-bb644623a

See you another time hashnoders! If you enjoyed reading this, please give feedback and I'll be sure to check them out.