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

4.2
stars
3,909 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.

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701 - 725 of 934 Reviews for Mastering Data Analysis in Excel

By Paul J J

Aug 20, 2017

Needs a more cohesive approach. Topics seems to be unorganized and don't follow a good pattern. Concepts taught are very helpful though.

By 杨珺

Apr 17, 2016

This course has a lot to do with math and statistics and I find it really hard to follow especially when it comes to the final project.

By Viv

Apr 1, 2020

Quiz is very difficult without mentor explainations, lots of stuff wasn't covered in lecture videos. Honestly a very frustrating class

By José L

Oct 12, 2017

The title of this course does not suggest the topics that are covered in this course. Anyway, the topics covered are useful .

By Harish N

Apr 4, 2020

A little more emphasis should be given to the explanation of basic concepts so that beginners can also understand it easily.

By Weiliang P

Dec 29, 2015

The whole course has very little about excel, rather about aweful a lot of data models. The course title is very misleading.

By Despoina E

Feb 3, 2016

It's quite interesting, but definitely not a beginners one. I'm put off quite a bit by the exclusively financial examples

By Milan M

Jan 21, 2016

after the second week I droped this course...I thought it will include excel and economics knowledge but was very wrong..

By Avulapati N

Aug 21, 2020

The course content is great and the instructor also explained concepts well!

The course assignments are outdated tough.

By subramanian a

Jan 9, 2016

The later part of the sessions lacks practical applicability and it is more abstract, that I find difficult to relate

By Rotimi

May 7, 2016

It's too advanced for people with no experience in statistics and sometimes too abstract to relate with

By B. A N

Jul 2, 2020

The course was informative but needed more examples to understand the concepts like the final example.

By Camilo E S C

Jan 19, 2020

Really bored... now, I want to change and they charge me more for that. what a bad service, just money

By Izayas R J

Feb 22, 2016

The importance of this course is huge. However, I did miss better explanation from some topics...

By Santiago Y A

Aug 1, 2016

It's more statistics than Excel itself, wich is good but I think the name doesn't fit to it

By Stephanie H

May 24, 2018

this course is to some extent too difficult for me, It is not easy for me to understand.

By VICTOR H Z T

Nov 22, 2015

un poco complicado para mi creo q falta informacion en que apoyarme para los ejercicios

By 王伟

Nov 17, 2015

it is too complicated for me this courese, not very useful for daily work. but anyway i

By Jared V

Feb 10, 2016

This course was over my head academically and I was able to glean very little from it.

By Chris H

Dec 12, 2015

They have a lot of good material. It will probably be better the second time around.

By Jongah K

Nov 2, 2019

not recommend if you want to learn about Excel. More fore stat/analytics in general

By Qian W

May 12, 2016

could have lecture more.... the videos talks little about the spreadsheet provided

By Thuong N T

Feb 28, 2023

This course is challenging for me. I don't completely understand all knowledge.

By tressie p

Jul 12, 2020

it seems like there need to be some prerequisities to this class, like finance.

By Samhita A

Jul 2, 2020

It was a bit too fast and there is a lot of math formulas than I expected