IENG 423Design of Decision Support Systems

Modeling with ExcelExcel BasicsPivot Tables and Pivot Charts in Decision Support Systems

Pivot Tables

Excel is very good at: Letting your organize your data, And do calculations on that data …and show you the results, …and redo the calculations, and…

Excel is not so good at: Letting you change the layout of your data

after you have set up the worksheet… ..at least in most cases

Pivot Tables

Excel provides a powerful tools to let you organize and present your data in different ways…They are called “Pivot Tables”Its very flexible in terms of what you want to display as column and what are rowsIn fact, it is trivially easy to change that… make rows into columns and columns into rowsThat is why they are called pivot tables… you can pivot you data tables (lists)

Pivot Tables

Does that impress everyone?Everyone say “ooooh!”Me either

Pivot Tables

But what does impress me…… is that Pivot tables allow you to summarize data in a worksheet …Across one, two or three dimensions……think crosstab tables Like product output by factory and

month

Pivot Tables

There’s a bit of a catch…The data to be used as input for a pivot table must be organized like a data list (data base) That is, each row must be represent

one entity A test event Performance for a factory for a reporting

period …

Pivot Tables

To create a Pivot Table Select a cell in the original data Click on Data on the toolbar The select Pivot Table and Pivot Chart

Report…. Next you will see the Pivot Table/Pivot

Chart Wizard

Pivot Tables

In the Pivot Table/Pivot Chart Wizard Identify the source of data for your table Indicate whether you want a Pivot Table or

Pivot Chart Click Next Then confirm or select the data range to be

input for your Pivot Chart Click Next Indicate whether you want your Pivot Table

on an existing worksheet or a new worksheet

Click Finish

Pivot Tables

Now you will see a Pivot table shell (nothing in it), and a field list boxDrag and place the fields where you want them to build the tableAs you drop the field header, Excel will start to populate the Pivot table…but wait, there’s more…

Pivot Tables

Do CreatePivot Exercise on pg. 157 of Frye book Open CreatePivot.xls

Pivot Tables

Explore Pivot Table Toolbar

Pivot Tables

You can Filter data Change the calculations done on Pivot

table source data Form Pivot Tables, just like other cells Collapse/Expand subcategories Rearrange the table as you please

Pivot Charts

Pivot Charts are graphic representations of Pivot TablesPivot Charts are data charts just like we saw when we looked at Charts and Graphs……but tied to the data in the Pivot Table

Pivot Charts

You can select Pivot Chart when you are creating Pivot Table/Pivot Chart…..or…Select the Pivot Chart wizard after you have created you Pivot TableNote: your Pivot Chart is tied to your Pivot Table……if you change the underlying Pivot Table, the Pivot Chart changes

Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts

In a real world application it will not be unusual for you to want to create a Pivot Table or Pivot Chart from another (outside of Excel) data sourceThere are several ways to do thisOne is to import a text file into Excel Try importing Export.txt into Excel