Excel Project

The intent of this MS Excel project was to familiarize each student with the basic, as well as some advanced, functions and the set-up of this application program. It did not only make me understand how to use MS Excel functions to perform calculations, but also showed me how I am able to display data more efficiently and effectively so that it is easier to understand (i.e. by the usage of Pivot Tables, a concept I was familiar with already, but which is a great tool that I needed several times in my life as a student already; hence, I know it will be very helpful to know how to apply this in my future job in the business environment). Moreover, I learned how to adjust several settings so that I can print the Excel worksheets, which I created, more efficiently. (This was always a problem for me at my home university since I was not aware of the fact that you actually have a lot of discretion in determining how to print out your Excel worksheets!)

All what I learned was brought to me by applying a scenario in which I am pretending to be a person working for a large fitness center, that demands certain analysis tasks from me to test the effectiveness of one particular training program. The data I was provided with contained information for 500 different persons and listed age, sex, and 21 heart measurements (from time 0:00 to 20:00, which consists of a 15 minute workout and a 5 minute cool-down phase). This raw data had to be processed to calculate a maximum heart rate, a target heart rate, as well as the highest heart rate achieved by any individual. These numbers then were taken to further determine whether the individuals reached their target heart rate and by what percentage their heart rates increased on average. Furthermore, I had to create two Pivot Tables, to determine how many individuals actually reached their target heart rates and how it was split between females and males. The second Pivot Table sorted the average percentage increase of the heart rate according to gender and age groups (this is displayed in the table below). ALl in all, this was a very interesting project and it showed me how to apply the concepts learned in the lectures.