Section 12.5. Complexity


12.5. Complexity

The relationships in data are often hard to understand. In Figure 12-2 the day of the week and trading volume seem to be related to changes in the stock price. We can see this in the chart, but that does not mean we know what the relationship is. Sometimes statistical tools like regression can explain what is going on but often all you can do is show what is happening.

You can represent anything with Excel as long as you can break it down into understandable pieces. A person can only deal with a limited amount of information at a time, and a display should work with this limitation, not ignore it.

Pivot tables and pivot charts are a good choice when a single view of the data is not sufficient. In some cases, pivot table and charts can be the whole user interface for an application.

You can use controls, like list boxes , to allow users to navigate the options and dimensions. The applications in the book use this approach. It gives you more control than a pivot table over both the final appearance and the user interaction.

Excel makes it easy to change the way information is presented and there is no reason the presentation has to stay the same throughout the life of the project.

In a budgeting application, management might have a specific format for the finished budget. The final format may not be convenient during the budget building process, and you might simplify the process by working on the budget in a different format. You can break information up, build in balancing calculations, and work on the data in any format that makes it easy to handle. Later, after all the changes are in and everything is agreed to, Excel is good at moving information around and reformatting it to create the required finished product.



Analyzing Business Data with Excel
Analyzing Business Data with Excel
ISBN: 0596100736
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 101
Authors: Gerald Knight

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