Excel Project

        I have to say that the Excel Project for ISM 3004 had me running for the hills at first. After watching the videos I thought it would be just like any other computer classes' excel project and just be the mundane salvo of copy and paste. This project was a bit more complicated and made you think critically to create the correct formulas to acquire the data needed. The project was to take a set of raw data and manipulate it using formulas and tables to show specific information found in the data. This included averages of the data, pivot tables, functions to determine whether or not the people in the data reached a certain heart rate, and specific demographic information about the data.
        Out of the entire project the formula to find if the target heart rate was achieved was the most difficult for myself. I was trying all types of combination of formulas to achieve this. They included vlookup, if, find, search, and max all to no avail. No matter what combination I tried I was getting an error come up for my formula. Finally when I was ready to throw my keyboard and smash my printer in a field, I realized I needed to just use the value of a formula I found earlier in the project. I was so happy to be done with the formula =if(logical_test, [value_if_true], [value_if_false]).
       The learned a few things during this project especially about the uses of formulas to find certain data in workbooks. As well as the formulas, I also learned how to create Pivot Tables in Excel. Before the lectures and this project I did not even know there was such a thing as a pivot table. However; now that I know of their existence, I believe they can be extremely useful for any business owner trying to analyze a set of data. Posted below is the screen shot of my "Avg Increase" pivot table.