Excel Project

This week I started in on my Excel Project.  I've worked a lot with Excel, so most of this was rather simple.  I've used Functions and cell cropping, inserting, and everything under the Sun with Excel.  The first part of the project was to add several columns of data that would give you the max heart rate that you were allowed to achieve.  This was a simple Function calculation of 220 minus the cell the contained the Subject's age.  The next thing was creating a Target Heart Rate for the subjects.  We first had to create another column, then make an area for which to refer to the percentage of the Max Heart Rate that you wanted the Target Heart Rate to be.  You then created a Function of the Max Heart Rate multiplied by the Absolute Value of the Target Heart Rate percentage.  We then created another column with the Max Heart Rate achieved through the testing phase.  I created a Max function that encompassed the different times (20 of them).  This gave me the max heart rate of those 20 different observations.

We then made an If Function to show whether the person reached their target Heart Rate by comparing the Highest Heart Rate column and the Target Heart Rate column.  If the Highest Heart Rate was greater than or equal to the Target Heart Rate, then the Function should return back "Yes" if not, then "No."  This is where I hit my first snag.  I had forgotten that you had to place the words "Yes" and "No" into quotation marks.  It took the use of the Excel Help function to aid me in that area.  Needless to say, I figured it out within a couple of (somewhat) frustrating minutes.

The final column we had to create was the percentage increase in heart rate from the starting heart rate to the Max Heart Rate.  This one was simple math of  (Max Heart Rate - Starting Heart Rate)/Starting Heart Rate.  Easy peasy.

Now we get into the fun stuff.  I had no idea what PivotTables were until this class.  This was exciting.  I love learning new things, especially about stuff that I know a LOT about.  It felt like the instructions kind of held our hand through it, but that's probably for the best.  I would have been a little lost on how to do it.  I don't know how to explain what I did, but here's my final product.

Image created by Chris Guderian