Hey there.

You probably do a lot of calculations

in your daily life. Maybe it's figuring
out how much to tip someone or balancing
your budget. You might do some of
these calculations in your head or with paper and pencil or the
calculator on your phone. You might even have
shortcuts to use to make the calculations easier. You'll perform a lot of
calculations as a
data analyst too. But they'll involve more numbers in a wider range
of calculations. That's where you'll put your
data analyst tools to work. We'll show you how you
could use formulas in a spreadsheet to
complete some of the most basic calculations. Formulas are one of
the many shortcuts that data analysts use. But rest assured, even
though they're shortcuts, they'll still calculate
with complete accuracy. We've covered a lot
of these calculations earlier in the program. But if you skip that part
and want a refresher, we'll review them here. These calculations
will also be more advanced than the ones
we've covered so far. But they'll also be closer to what you might use on the job.
We'll be using Google
Sheets in this video, but you can also use Excel. The steps might look a
little different in Excel, but the outcomes
will be the same. Let's try out some
calculations with sales data from a
discount store chain. We'll look at data for one
of the stores in the chain. Our objective: use the
existing sales data to find any trends. This is a great way to
see a lot of the ways formulas can be useful
in your analysis. We'll start by
finding annual sales over the years 2011-2020. The data is already organized in
columns by month and
in rows by year. But we don't have the total
sales for each year yet. We can use a sum function
to help us figure that out. We'll add the sales
from 2011 first. We'll add a heading for
the annual sales column, then we can type our sum
function and a formula. All formulas begin
with an equal sign. We'll type that first, followed by sum and then
an open parenthesis. After the open parenthesis, we need to tell the formula
which cells are being added. In this case, we need data from the whole row which
begins in cell B2. B2 is a cell
reference we'll use. Instead of typing
each cell one by one, we can put them in the
formula quickly by selecting cell B2 and dragging the fill handle
across the row to the last cell with
sales data, M2. Now we'll complete
the formula by closing the parentheses
and pressing Enter. Just like that, we've calculated the total sales for 2011.
Here's another shortcut we worked with in an earlier video. The fill handle is the
tiny box in the
corner of each sale. You can use it for
lots of things like selecting
multiple cells for a formula or continuing a
pattern across several cells, the fill handle definitely
qualifies as a shortcut. We can use the formula
we created to calculate the total sales for the
other years in the dataset. All we have to do is drag the fill handle down
the other cells in the annual sales
column and we'll have total sales data for the rest of the years
in the dataset. Let's say, we also need
to find the growth in annual sales
from year to year. This would be a good
time to think through the problem before
we try to solve it. Do we have the data we need
to solve this? Not yet. Thinking backwards
like this helps us plan out the steps
to move forward. The first step
we'll need to do is calculate the total
sales per year. Then we'll measure the rate
of change between years. We'll start by
labeling a new column. In this case, we won't need to use a function or
parentheses, since we're only using
data from two cells. We can just use the
name of those cells, we'll type an equals sign
and then click in "Cell N3", which automatically populates
that sale in the formula. Next, we'll add a minus sign to the formula because we're
subtracting to find
the difference between two consecutive years. Clicking in "Cell N2" gives
us the total from 2011, which we can then subtract
from the total from 2012. Then we hit Enter and get our sales growth from 2011-
2012. We're definitely getting
some useful data here. Let's keep going.
We can also use our sales growth to find the growth rate
between the two years. We'll show this as a percentage. We'll head our column with
the percent sign and growth. To do this, we'll divide
the total in cell O3 by the annual sales
from 2011 in cell N2. A slash is a symbol that a formula recognizes
as division, so we'll place that between the two cell references
and presto, there's the growth rate. Growth rates are usually
shown as percentages, which can be easier than a decimal to read
and understand. Let's change this
number to a percentage. Time for another shortcut. All we have to do is
click the percent style button and our growth rate
will become a percentage. We can select the cells
for both the total growth and the growth rate to populate the rest of the two
columns. We have some negative numbers, but that just means
that there was negative growth from
one year to the next. We've got just a
few more things to calculate for our stakeholders. Next step is finding
the average sales. We want to compare sales between months to learn
if there's a trend. We'll add this in a row
instead of a column. This will line up our
averages under each month. To find our averages, will calculate the
total and then divide that total by the number
of values added to get it. We can do this by using
the average function. Between our parentheses will select the cells that contain
the sales data for
January, B2 through B11. We'll duplicate
that formula across the row through December
to look for trends. Right away, we know
that summer months and December have the
highest average sales. Since our stakeholders
will want to understand our findings
quickly and easily, we'll add a little
visualization to the data with
conditional formatting. You'll learn more about data visualizations like
conditional formatting soon. But here's a sneak peek. Conditional Formatting is a
spreadsheet tool that changes how cells appear when values
meet specific conditions. Let's apply conditional
formatting to the cells with the
average sales by month. We'll use a color scale to
show the range of averages. Well, the lowest monthly
average remaining as white and we'll apply shades of green to the
rest of the values. The brighter the green, the higher the average. Now, when we
share our analysis
with our stakeholders, they will be able
to tell right away which months have the
highest average sales. Just a couple more steps
to complete our analysis. Now we need to find
the minimum and maximum for average
monthly sales. With the dataset this small, it might be easy to find the minimum
and maximum
values without a formula, but it's still good
practice to use one. Not to mention, using a formula helps prevent human error,
will again rely on formulas with Functions to do
these calculations, we'll start with the
lowest monthly average. Our function here is MIN, followed by the cells with the
average month B12 through M12. After we press Enter, the lowest monthly
average is calculated. We can repeat the same steps to find the highest
monthly average, in this formula will
use the same data, but we'll replace MIN
with MAX for maximum. For this store location, sales are strongest in December
and weakest in January. We could share
these findings with stakeholders if they've
met our objectives. If they haven't,
we might need to continue with our analysis. Either way, I hope
you've learned how spreadsheet formulas can be valuable tools when
doing calculations. Coming up, we'll check out
more formulas. See you soon.