From the course: Excel PivotTables: Mastering PivotTables and PivotCharts

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Why PivotTables?

Why PivotTables? - Microsoft Excel Tutorial

From the course: Excel PivotTables: Mastering PivotTables and PivotCharts

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Why PivotTables?

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- Alright, welcome to Pivot Table 101. Now, the purpose of this section is to really just lay some of the groundwork before we get into the more advanced topics. So we'll practice inserting pivots, manipulating views, exploring some of the basic options, and then later in the course we'll start to dig in deeper. So let's start with a question. Why pivot tables? Why are pivot tables one of the most important and powerful tools in Excel when it comes to data analysis? So let's answer this with an example. Let's say you have state-level data spanning multiple years, and you're looking at total population and student population. If you only had access to this data in its raw format, how would you answer the following questions? Number one: which state had the highest population in 2002? Alright, that one's not so bad. Maybe you could just throw some filters on the header row, drill down to 2002, and then sort column C to answer the question that way. Definitely a perfectly valid approach.…

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