The PivotTable function in Microsoft Excel allows users to see massive amounts of data condensed into a manageable format. The data sets we will be analyzing throughout this chapter are information gathered by the U.S. Department of Education surveying all institutions of higher learning in the United States and data about the movement of crude oil and other imports into the U.S. by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. These data sets viewed in a raw, uninterpreted manner could be considered difficult to understand or take any meaningful information from. However, taking data and using a PivotTable in Excel will allow the user to manipulate and view attributes of the information in different ways to generate something that anyone can easily interpret and understand.

Attribution

Chapter 6 by Emese Felvégi & Robert McCarn licensed under CC BY 4.0