Analysis ‘App’ – Excelling at Excel

I tend to discuss quite a lot regarding analytical techniques and using them on certain aspects such as investing or understanding stocks. Something that I haven’t provided enough are some basic applications and utilities for analysis that people surprisingly don’t capitalize or integrate in their daily lives. I use Microsoft Excel on a daily basis for work, scheduling, and calculations for analytics because it is a tool that can be used at all skill levels and for all purposes. The reason why Excel is because it was something that was taught at all layers of academia from Elementary to College, and is the simple man’s industry standard for data analysis along with techniques.

Excel is a very useful tool in my life because the data analytics that I’m involved in sifting through has tens-of-thousands of rows of information regarding confidential metrics for casino systems. It has useful tools such as the ‘fill handle’ allowing a quick autocompletion of preserving formulas for new rows and entries of data to manipulate rather than using more convoluted methods. I hail the ‘fill-handle’ implementation in Excel as one of the greatest inventions “since sliced bread” because it has so much functionality for anyone’s data contexts, their formula establishment, and is so easy to use and understand once you practice it a few times.

Webopedia showing the direct application of a ‘fill handle’ in a simple summation formula.

This fill handle is useful for preserving formulas for calculating trends such as the change in stock price or even financial metrics such as inflation or growth rates for multiple years. Other valuable capabilities for Excel as an application is that I used it towards creating my own consequences tables but also integrated fill handles to preserve formulas valued among rows in Excel. I am a big advocate for the benefits it offers as well since it was also taught in my Graduate courses towards finding financial metrics like the present value of money or even financial derivative aspects like the current price of calls and puts for stocks.

What softwares and applications do you use for your own analytics, whether it involves technical data or other metrics? Feel free to comment and discuss on what programs you use and why you use them for analytics!