Spreadsheet
ModelingCornell

Certificate Program

Have you ever received a dataset that contains useful information but you can't quite get your hands on it? The data may not be in the right format, may have errors, or perhaps require additional elements. Though these usability issues can make it difficult or even impossible to get answers to important questions, we can often transform a dataset like this into something ready to use when it has an underlying structure.

In this course, you will discover how to make data usable by following a disciplined process of transforming, cleaning, and synthesizing data. You will gain hands-on practice getting your data ready by using filters and logical functions to structure data, identify errors, and create a “clean” dataset. Upon completion of this course, you will have developed the skills necessary to create a transformed dataset in Excel that you can then use to develop informative dashboards or perform critical analyses.

Organizations have a tremendous amount of data at their disposal to help them develop strategic plans and make informed business decisions. Helping people make sense of that data quickly and easily, however, can be a challenging proposition. In this course, you will examine how to use built-in Excel tools and create custom Excel-based dashboards to turn data into a valuable organizational asset.

As you work through this course, you will get hands-on practice implementing a variety of functions and techniques to develop Excel-based analytical tools. By applying intelligent design principles, you will build dashboards that clearly guide user input and provide results dynamically, giving users the ability to specify the data they want to see and providing output in a flexible format. You will implement strategies to create dashboards that can effectively handle many types of data and offer an informative and user-friendly interface with a combination of numeric and graphic outputs. By the end of this course, you will have acquired an assortment of tools, practices, and techniques you can utilize to grow your portfolio of dashboard development skills.

You are required to have completed the following course or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Making Data Usable

If you've ever been asked a question like “What is the projected sales revenue for the next quarter?” or “When will your major development project be complete?” then you know a common answer is “It depends.” While most of the decisions or projections we make include some level of uncertainty, we often fail to account for this uncertainty, resulting in suboptimal outcomes.

In this course, you will explore how to build robust evaluation models in Excel and incorporate the impact of uncertainty. As you work through this course, you will get hands-on practice identifying situations where using fixed “average” input values can lead to poor estimates and decisions. In Excel modeling, when we use a single fixed number in all scenarios to represent an uncertain value to be revealed in the future, the actual outcome of that value could substantially impact the model metrics and resulting decisions.

A better approach, which you will practice in this course, is to build robust models that allow a user to account for those different outcomes and provide visibility to the potential consequences and tradeoffs. More specifically, you will develop an Excel-based framework for generating random values from several probability distributions that you can use to build simulation models to help understand and manage system performance. At the end of this course, you will have a variety of tools and strategies to develop models that can account for uncertainty, enabling you to make better-informed decisions.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Making Data Usable
• Creating Effective Data-Driven Dashboards

In this course, you will build spreadsheet-based models that evaluate solutions and decision problems, investigating a number of different methods and built-in tools to optimize decisions and assess tradeoffs. One of the most powerful ways to take an evaluation model to the next level is to build an optimization layer that automates the process of finding the best solution for a given set of input factors. Depending on the scale, scope, and mathematical complexity of the model, you will discover that different kinds of optimization approaches may work better than others.

You will explore some of the most practical ways to layer optimization on top of Excel-based evaluation models. For simpler problems, this involves efficiently listing and examining all the potential solutions; for more complex problems, it entails automating simple heuristics using VBA or by employing Excel's Solver tool. By the end of this course, you will have the skills to confidently use optimization to help improve the decisions you need to make based on your data.

You are required to have completed the following courses or have equivalent experience before taking this course:

• Making Data Usable
• Creating Effective Data-Driven Dashboards
• Developing Robust Models to Evaluate Decisions