SCORE Free Webinar - Organizing Data for Analysis

How many times have you laboriously gathered data only to discover that no matter what you do you can’t use it to produce the analysis you need? Often the problem is that the information is not structured in a way that can produce the desired result. This webinar will explain how to set things up so you can get from where you are to where you want to be.

This live, one-hour session will explain and demonstrate:

• Key data analysis concepts, including field, record, table and relationship;
• How to identify the data structure you need, and why there is no one-size-fits-all solution;
• How to decide what adjustments, if any, you need to make to an existing data structure;
• Tools and techniques for automating some of the adjustments, including combining and splitting fields, and converting horizontal to vertical record structures;
• What is required to join tables so you can connect data from several sources; and
• How to test your data to make sure it works.

The demonstrations will be done on Excel, but the principles are applicable to

databases, SQL, and other tools that can be used to parse and analyze data.

This session will be good preparation for a July program on Excel’s Power Query

feature (date TBD).

There will be plenty of time for questions, so come prepared.