Chapter 5. Explore Patterns in Data

Excel offers you much more than a way of keeping track of your data and doing calculations. It also provides tools to analyze your data and thus to understand it better and to make better decisions. In this chapter, you find a range of tools that can give you many insights into your data.

One of the most useful tools, the PivotTable, is also one of the least understood. Similar to cross-tabulation in statistics, a PivotTable shows how data is distributed across categories. For example, you can analyze data and display how different products sell by region and by quarter. Alternatively, you can analyze income distribution and consumer preferences by gender and age bracket. Excel makes it easy for you to answer useful questions about your data.