220 What Every Engineer Should Know About Excel

and Excel Online is that you can log into the Microsoft Of ce 365 portal and use Excel
Online to view your spreadsheet and share the excitement with your colleague.

11.4 Integrating MS Excel with Cloud Resources

Thanks to the power of internetworking, Excel is no longer limited to data contained
within an Excel spreadsheet or on a local or network disk drive close to your computer.
With valid Internet connectivity, the possibilities are nearly endless for connecting to data
and being able to manipulate it.
As demonstrated with several scenarios in Chapter 10, Excel can obtain data from other
worksheets, workbooks, data les, databases, websites, and even online services like
Facebook. Data are everywhere and Excel can get to the data either through the DATA/
GET EXTERNAL DATA menu options or the Power Query facility, noted as the DATA/
GET & TRANFORM menu options.
The reader is encouraged to explore the services that Excel supports to see how the data
look when brought into an Excel workbook. Chapter 10 provides a great start to this explo-
ration process. For example, Problem 10.2 points to data on the PowerBall website.

11.4.1 Microsoft Azure

In addition to Of ce 365, Microsoft has a cloud service offering for server-based computing
capabilities. Called Microsoft Azure, it is a constantly evolving Microsoft service offering.
More information can be found at the Microsoft Azure website at http://azure.microsoft.
com. The reader is encouraged to consider signing up for a free account to evaluate and
explore cloud-based Microsoft SQL Server database services on Azure.

11.4.2 Amazon Web Services

Similar to Microsoft, Amazon has a cloud service offering for server-based computing capa-
bilities, offered under the AWS product family. AWS is a constantly evolving product offer-
ing from Amazon. More information about AWS can be found at http://aws.amazon.com.
The reader is encouraged to consider signing up for a free tier account with AWS and
explore cloud-based MySQL database services at AWS.

11.5 Excel and Microsoft Power BI

This entire text has focused on Excel as an excellent toolset for analyzing data, process-
ing data, and charting the results of data analyses. Microsoft Power BI is a product that
complements Excel with regard to charting data and presenting the data to users in a
Dashboard format. Excel worksheets make an excellent data source for Microsoft Power BI
as do database sources.
Figures 11.1 and 11.2 show sample data sources in Excel workbook form as inputs to
Microsoft Power BI. They represent data regarding a cash room operation and show
Of ce 365 and Integration with Cloud Resources 221

FIGURE 11.1

FIGURE 11.2
222 What Every Engineer Should Know About Excel

FIGURE 11.3

dashboard data regarding their operation. Figure 11.3 shows a sample dashboard created
in Microsoft Power BI in under an hour, demonstrating the speed with which data dash-
boards can be created.
The reader is encouraged to sign up for a free account at www.powerbi.com and explore
the use of this toolset in conjunction with Excel.
References

1. Hillier, F.S. and Lieberman, G.J., Introduction to Mathematical Programming, 2nd ed., McGraw-
Hill, New York, 1995.
2. Holman, J.P., Experimental Methods for Engineers, 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 2000.
3. Holman, J.P., Heat Transfer, 9th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 2002.
4. Winston, W.L., Operations Research, Applications, and Algorithms, 3rd ed., PWS-Kent, Boston,
MA, 1994.
5. Wu, N. and Coppins, R., Linear Programming, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1981.

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Index

A formatting, 50–53
moving averages, graphing, 46–49
Absolute address, 13–16
moving on worksheet, 8–9
Access, connecting to, 209, 210–211
pivot tables, using, 189–195
Address, cell, see Cell address
resizing, 46
Amazon Web Services, 212, 220
sizing on worksheet, 8–9
Area/3-D Area, 41
stretching, 46
Averages, moving, 46–49
surface, 53
AWS, 212, 220
Cloud
Axis, format, 36
integration with, 219–222
Azure, Microsoft, 211, 220
Of ce 365, use of, 219–220
Coef cient of determination, 33
B Column charts, 49–50
Bar charts, 49–50 Columns, 199
Bessel function, 40, 41 headings, printing, 7
Binding, 166 switching to rows, 16–17
Bonds Combined regression, 138–139, 142
discount, rate of return, 150–151 Comments, IF statement to return, 112
interest, reinvestment of, rate of return, Compound interest formulas, 148–153
151–152 Conventions, 2
multiple investments, rate of return, 152–153 Copying
zero-coupon, rate of return, 152 cell equations, 95–97
Borders cell formulas, 13–15
adding, 9 Fill Handle for, 12–13, 15
editing, 9 formulas, 12–13
removing, 9 Correlation coef cient, 33
Bubble charts, 29 Correlation equations, 32–33
exponential data with power relation, 33–35
exponential functions, 37–38
C
power relation with exponential data, 33–35
Callouts, 60 Cost function, 159
Cell address Cumulative frequency distribution, 113–116,
absolute, 13–16 117, 119–120
changing status of, 15–16
relative, 13–16
D
Cells
equations in, copying of, 95–97 Data elds
ll in, 9 in pivot tables, 181
formulas in, copying, 13–15 summary functions for, 184–188
Chart Area, 51 Data management, 199–217
Chart depth, 49 external data, connecting to, 209–215
Chart Options, 51 ltering data, 201–202
Charts, 27–54; see also Scatter charts; 3-D charts functions for, 207–209
bar, 49–50 organizing data, 199–201
calculation, for, 45 sorting data, 203–204
column, 49–50 subtotals, 204–207
editing elements of, 9 Data Series, 51

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