Posts

Google Sheets vs Excel: Which Is Better for Data Analysis and Visualization?

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A real-world comparison using two hands-on data projects — so you can pick the right tool for your goals.       Why This Comparison Matters? If you are learning data analysis, one of the first questions you will face is: should I learn Google Sheets or Excel? At first glance the two tools look interchangeable — both can clean, organize, and analyze data.  But the real difference shows up during visualization and reporting, which is where your audience actually sees your work. Today both spreadsheet tools are tightly coupled to powerful BI platforms: ·         Google Sheets → Looker Studio (free, cloud-native, shareable links) ·         Microsoft Excel → Power BI (advanced modeling, geographic analysis, enterprise reporting) So your choice is really about the full ecosystem: dashboards, collaboration, visualization depth, and the kind of analysis you want to do.  This post compares both u...

How to Create Pivot Tables and Charts in Google Sheets (Sales Analysis Example)

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Pivot tables are one of the most useful tools in Google Sheets for summarizing and analyzing data. If you’ve ever worked with a dataset that feels too large or repetitive, pivot tables help you make sense of it quickly. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use pivot tables and pivot charts in Google Sheets to analyze a sales dataset. We’ll focus on a simple but practical example: total sales by category. By the end of this guide, you’ll be confident creating your own pivot tables and charts for basic data analysis. You can follow along by [downloading the practice dataset here ] 📌 If you prefer learning by watching, you can check out the video version of this tutorial below: Understanding the Dataset Before creating a pivot table, it’s important to understand what we’re working with. In this dataset, the key columns we’re interested in are: Category Sales If you look closely at the Category column, you’ll notice that the same categories appear multiple times. For example, Furniture...