Part 9. Working with Data and Charts

In Excel, a formula calculates a value based on the values in other cells of the workbook. Excel displays the result of a formula in a cell as a numeric value.

A function is an abbreviated formula that performs a specific operation on a group of values. Excel provides more than 250 functions that can help you with tasks ranging from determining loan payments to calculating investment returns.

You've already learned the fundamentals of creating a worksheet, so now you can concentrate on some of the other features that add to the data presentation. For example, you can create a chart based on data in a worksheet. Charts are very useful for interpreting data; however, different people look at data in different ways. To account for this, you can quickly change the appearance of charts in Excel by clicking directly on the chart. You can change titles, legend information, axis points, category names, and more.

The axes are the grid on which the data is plotted. On a 2D chart, the y-axis is the vertical axis on a chart (the value axis) and the x-axis is the horizontal axis (the category axis). A 3D chart has these two axes, plus a z-axis. You can control all the aspects of the axes the appearance of the line, the tick marks, the number format used, and more.