Mastering Excel Through Projects: A Learn-by-Doing Approach from Payroll to Crypto to Data Analysis

Master Excel in less than two weeks with this unique project-based book! Let’s face it, we all master skills in our own way, but building a soup-to-nuts project is one of the best ways to make learning stick and get up to speed quickly. Whether you are just getting started with Excel or are an experienced user, this book will elevate your knowledge and skills. For a beginner, the micro examples in each chapter will warm you up before you dive into the projects. For experienced users, the projects, especially those with table setup considerations, will help you become more creative in your interactions with Excel.

Readers will benefit from building eight unique projects, each covering a different topic, including a word game, a food nutrition ranking, a payroll (tax withholding) calculation, an encryption, a two-way table, a Kaplan-Meier analysis, a data analysis via a pivot table and the K-means Clustering data mining method. Through these projects, you will experience firsthand how Excel skills are organized together to accomplish tasks that sound complex and daunting when first described.

Get started with a word game which asks users to find English words that amount to exactly 100 points, with each letter of the alphabet assigned a point 1, 2, 3, … 26, respectively. You will disassemble a word into letters and then sum up their points, and then take it one step further, contemplating how to make the completed Excel worksheet more user friendly and completely automated. Increasingly challenging tasks like this example build on what you have learned and increase your confidence along the way, ensuring your mastery of Excel.

Hong Zhou is a professor of computer science and mathematics at the University of Saint Joseph in Connecticut. Before returning to school for his doctoral degree, Dr. Zhou worked as a Java developer in Silicon Valley. Since 2004, Dr. Zhou has been teaching various courses in computer science, data science, mathematics, statistics, and informatics. His major research interests include data mining, bioinformatics, software agents, and blockchain. Dr. Zhou became interested in Excel through teaching computer skills and using them for research purposes; for example, applying Excel in teaching data mining, encryption, and health informatics. He also enjoys applying his Excel skills to help colleagues in their research projects.