Few weeks ago, someone asked me “What are the top 10 formulas?” That got me thinking.
While each of us have our own list of favorite, most frequently used formulas, there is no standard list of top 10 formulas for everyone. So, today let me attempt that.
If you want to become a data or business analyst then you must develop good understanding of Excel formulas & become fluent in them.
A good analyst should be familiar with below 10 formulas to begin with.
1. SUMIFS Formula
If you listen very carefully, you can hear thousands of managers around the world screaming… “How many x we did in region A, product B, customer type C in month M?” right now.
To answer this question without the song and dance of excessive filtering & selecting, you must learn SUMIFS formula.
This magical formula can sum up a set of values that meet several conditions.
The syntax of SUMIFS is like this:
=SUMIFS( what you want to sumup, condition column 1, condition, condition column 2, condition….)
Example:
=SUMIFS(sales, regions, “A”, products, “B”, customer types, “C”, month, “M”)
Learn more about SUMIFS formula.
10 Advanced SUMIFS examples (video)
2. X/VLOOKUP Formula
Pop quiz time ….
Which of the below things would bring world to a grinding halt?
A. Stop digging earth for more oil
B. Let US jump off the fiscal cliff or hit debt ceiling
C. Suddenly VLOOKUP (or XLOOKUP) formula stops working in all computers, world-wide, forever
If you answered A or B, then its high time you removed your head from sand and saw the world.
The answer is C (Well, if all coffee machines in the world unite & miraculously malfunction that would make a mayhem. But thankfully that option is not there)
XLOOKUP or VLOOKUP formula lets you search for a value in a table and return a corresponding value. For example you can ask What is the name of the customer with ID=C00023 or How much is the product price for product code =p0089 and VLOOKUP would give you the answers.
The syntax for VLOOKUP is simple.
=VLOOKUP(what you want to lookup, table, column from which you want the output, is your table sorted? )
Example:
=VLOOKUP(“C00023”, customers, 2, false)
Lookup customer ID C00023 in the first column of customers table and return the value from 2nd column. Assume that customers table is not sorted.
Learn more about the new & improved XLOOKUP formula.
Click here to learn more about VLOOKUP Formula.
Bonus: Comprehensive guide to lookup formulas.
3. Dynamic Array Functions
Excel 365 introduced a new class of functions called DYNAMIC ARRAY FUNCTIONS. These will let you filter, sort, extract distinct values from your data with ease. It also added a special formula functionality called spill behavior. It means Excel formulas can now return multiple values as a result & spill them down as needed. See this quick GIF demo.
Learn more about the POWERFUL dynamic array functionality in Excel (video).
4. IF & IFS Formulas
Q: What do you call a business that does not make a single decision?
A: Government!
Jokes aside, every business needs to make decisions, even governments!!! So, how do we model these decisions in Excel.
Using IF formulas of course.
For example, lets say your company decides to give 10% pay hike to all people reading Chandoo.org & 5% hike to rest. Now, how would you express this in Excel?
Simple, we write =IF(employee reads Chandoo.org, “10% hike”, “5% hike”)
The syntax of IF formula is simple:
=IF (condition to test, output for TRUE, output for FALSE)
10 must know Advanced IF formulas.
5. Nesting Formulas
Unfortunately, businesses do not make simple decisions. They always complicate things. I mean, have you ever read income tax rules?!? Your head starts spinning by the time you reach 2nd paragraph.
To model such complex decisions & situations, you need to nest formulas.
Nesting refers to including one formula with in another formula.
An example situation: Give 12% hike to employees who read Chandoo.org at least 3 days a week, Give 10% hike to those who read Chandoo.org at least once a week, for the rest give 5% hike.
Excel Formula: =IF(number of times employee reads chandoo.org in a week >=3, “12% hike”, IF( number of times employee reads chandoo.org in a week >0, “10% hike”, “5% hike”))
You see what we did above? We used IF formula inside another IF formula. This is nothing but nesting.
You can nest any formula inside another formula almost any number of times.
Nesting formulas helps us express complex business logic & rules with ease. As an analyst, you must learn the art of nesting.
Lots of nested formula examples & explanations here.
6. Basic Arithmetic Expressions
=(((123+456)*(789+987)) > ((123-456)/(789-987)))^3 & " time I saw a tiger"
If you read the above expression and not had to scratch your head once, then you are on way to become an awesome analyst.
Most people jump in to Excel formulas without first learning various basic operators & expressions. Fortunately, learning these requires very little time. Most of us have gone thru basic arithmetic & expressions in school. Here is a summary if you were caught napping in Math 101.
| Operator | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| + – * / | Basic arithmetic operators. Perform addition, subtraction, multiplication & division | 2+3, 7-2, 9*12, 108/3, 2+3*4-2 |
| ^ | Power of opetator. Raises something to the power of other value. | 2^3, 9^0.5, PI()^2, EXP(1)^0.5 |
| ( ) | To define precedence in calculations. Anything included in paranthesis is calcuated first. | (2+3)*(4+5) calcuates 2+3 first, then 4+5 and multiplies both results. |
| & | To combine 2 text values | “You are ” & “awesome” returns “You are awesome” |
| % | To divide with 100. | 2/4% will give 50 as result. Note: (2/4)% will give 0.5% as result. |
| : | Used to specify ranges | A1:B20 refers to the range from cell A1 to B20 |
| $ | To lock a reference column or row or both | $A$1 refers to cell A1 all the time. $A1 refers to column A, relative row based on where you use it. For more refer to absolute vs. relative references in Excel. |
| [ ] | Used to structurally refer to columns in table | ourSales[month] refers to the month column in the ourSales table. Works only in Excel 2007 or above. Know more about Excel Tables. |
| @ | Used to structurally refer to current row values in a table | ourSales[@month] refers to current row’s month value in oursales table. |
| # | Spill Operator (Excel 365) | Used to get spill range from a dynamic array formula |
| { } | To specify an inline array of values | {1,2,3,4,5} – refers to a the list of values 1,2,3,4,5 |
| < > <= >= | Comparison operators. Output will always be boolean – ie TRUE or FALSE. | 2>3 will be FALSE. 99<101 will be TRUE. |
| = <> | Equality operators. Check whether 2 values are equal or not equal. Output will TRUE or FALSE | 2=2, “hello”=”hello”, 4<>5 will all return TRUE. |
| * ? | Used as wild cards in certain formulas like COUNTIFS etc. | COUNTIFS(A1:A10, “a*”) counts the values in range A1:A10 starting with a. For more on this refer to COUNTIFS & SUMIFS in Excel |
| SPACE | Intersection operator. Returns the range at intersection of 2 ranges | A1:C4 B2:D5 refers to the intersection or range A1:C4 and B2:D5 and returns B2:C4. Caution: The output will be an array, so you must use it in another formula which takes arrays, like SUM, COUNT etc. |
7. Text formulas
While there are more than two dozen text formulas in Excel including the mysterious BHATTEXT (which is used to convert numbers to Thai Bhats, apparently designed by Excel team so that they could order Thai take out food #), you do not need to learn all of them. By learning few very useful TEXT formulas, you can save a ton of time when cleaning data or extracting portions from mountains of text.
As an aspiring analyst, at-least acquaint your self with below formulas:
- LEFT, RIGHT & MID – to extract portions of text from left, right & middle.
- TRIM – to remove un-necessary spaces from beginning, middle & end of a text.
- SUBSTITUTE – to replace portions of text with something else.
- LEN – to calculate the length of a text
- TEXT – to convert a value to TEXT formatting
- FIND – to find whether something is present in a text, if so at what position
Here are my top 6 TEXT formulas for data analysis.
8. NETWORKDAYS & WORKDAY Formulas
“There aren’t enough days in the weekend” – Somebody
Whether a weekend has enough days or not, as working analyst, you must cope with the working day calculations. For example, if a project takes 180 working days to complete and starts on 16th of January 2013, how would you find the end date?
Thankfully, we do not have to invent a formula for this. Excel has something exactly for this. WORKDAY formula takes a start date & working days and tells you what the end date would be.
Like wise NETWORKDAYS formula tells us how many working days are there between any 2 given dates.
Both these formulas accept a list of additional holidays to consider as well.
- NETWORKDAYS: calculate the number of working days between 2 dates (assuming Saturday, Sunday weekend)
- NETWORKDAYS.INTL: Same as NETWORKDAYS, but lets you use custom weekends [Excel 2010+ only]
- WORKDAY: Calculate the end date from a start date & number of working days
- WORKDAY.INTL: Same as WORKDAY, but lets you use custom weekends. [Excel 2010+ only]
More on working with Date & Time values in Excel.
9. SMALL & LARGE Formulas
Almost nobody asks about “Who was the second person to climb Mt. Everest, or walk on moon or finish 100 mtrs race the fastest?”.
And yet, all businesses ask questions like “Who is our 2nd most valuable customer?, third vendor from bottom on invoice delinquency? 4th famous coffee shop in Jamaica?”
So as analysts our job is to answer these questions with out wasting too much time. That is where SMALL, LARGE formulas come in handy.
- SMALL: Used to find nth smallest value from a list. Use it like =SMALL(range of values, n).
- LARGE: Used to find nth largest value from a list.
- MIN: Gives the minimum value of a list.
- MAX: Gives the maximum value of a list.
- RANK: Finds the rank of a value in a list. Use it like =RANK(value, in this list, order)
10. IFERROR Formula
Errors, lousy canteen food & dysfunctional coffee machines are eternal truths of corporate life. While you can always brown bag your lunch & bring a flask of finely brewed coffee to work, there is no escaping when your VLOOKUP #N/As. Or is there?
Well, you can always use the lovely IFERROR formula to handle errors in your formulas.
Syntax:
IFERROR(formula, what to do in case of error)
Use it like:
IFERROR(VLOOKUP(….), “Value not found!”)
Click here to learn more about IFERROR Formula.
3 Bonus Formulas
If you can master the above 10 formulas, you will be ahead of 80% of all Excel analysts. Here are 3 more important formulas that can come handy when doing some serious data analysis work.
- OFFSET formula: to generate dynamic ranges from a starting point and use them elsewhere (in charts, formulas etc.).
- SUMPRODUCT formula: Unleash the full power of Excel array processing by using SUMPRODUCT.
- SUBTOTAL formula: Calculate totals, counts & averages etc. on a range with filters.
Top 10 Excel Formulas – Video
If you like a video presentation of these formulas with some demos, check this out.
Sample file & more on the concepts shown in the video here.
What formulas do you think are important for analysts?
During my days as business analyst, not a single day went by without using Excel. It was an important tool in my journey to become an awesome analyst. I cannot stress the importance of formulas like SUMIFS, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH enough. They play a vital role in analyzing data & presenting outputs.
What about you? What formulas do you think are important for analysts? Please share your ideas & tips using comments.
Want to become an Awesome Analyst? Consider our Excel School program
If you are a budding analyst or manager, adding Excel Skills can be a very valuable investment of your time. My Excel school program is designed to help people like you to learn various basic & advanced features of Excel & use them to create kick ass reports, trackers & analysis. This program has 24 hours of Excel training, 40 example workbooks & 6 month online access.
15 Responses to “A Gantt Chart Alternative – Gantt Box Chart”
That's a great idea.
Maybe the planned End Date should be highlight more.
I don't know how it would look like (nor how to do it yet), but what if instead of finishing the bold line to the best case End Date, it finishes to the realistic End Date?
The idea is ok, I think other project management tools have this, already? Maybe not.
Gantt charts in my view are about the signal most unless thing in the world, theres no way you can look at one thats more that a little complex and understand what it's telling you. I'm going to write a diatribe on project management at some point, its one of my pet areas I think!! 😉
The issue I have with this chart Chandoo, is that Tasks need to be linked to each other, so they should inherit the uncertainty, which would mean the as you moved down chart the lines would be miles apart for later tasks, and you might have to add lots of lines for subsequent tasks to cover the various outcome of it's parents.
Having said that, for the high level board summary, it's a nice way to go, it it appeals to the management 😉
thanks Chandoo, great post.
Ross
Whoooa !!! That's a very clever idea Chandoo. I really love it.
I think i'll update my gantt project sheet with that idea soon (remember my template ?)
@ross : you can link start date to the end date of the previous task in your data. The only problem I still se is to which end date (real ? planned ? best ?) in order to have average amount of information.
If best end date, you'll tend to increase uncertainty at the end of chain, although if you link to real end date, uncertainty will be decreased too much, leading in both cases to wrong management direction.
Maybe planned till the task is finished then real will do the job ?
Hey chandoo, this looks good and this would definite add value in production planning / scheduling. Uncertainity in finishing a task is very high in production scheduling and this could give an insight or a bird eye view of possible shipments we can have....
I've always been frustrated by the limitations of gantt charts. Will definitely use this, I've always struggled with how to succinctly communicate the uncertainty of certain tasks without confusing stakeholders.
I like this, I think it's a very effective way of showing how a timeline can change and which parts of a project need close attention.
@Cyril / @Ross: I would intially link the the start date to the planned end date of the previous task, with the chart updating when a task has been completed to reflect the true end date.
Or what about giving a drop-down selection box to allow the user to see the chart based on planned/best-case/worst-case end dates?
Like the idea. Have found that Excel is more flexible than MS Project for graphical solutions. The "Best Case"\"Worst Case" metrics are theoretically appealing but once the project and\or phase commences their reliability diminishes. A chart like the above that showed Planned Start, Planned End, Replan End Start, Replan End Date, Number of Replans the Start and End Dates, and Actual would provide an active, actionable view of each task\phase. It would also highlight the areas which are riskiest.
It is always amazing how flexible excel can be.
My question is how would the chart show a scenario where the date moved up? If a task is dropped or the duration of the task is significantly reduced by applying more people or machinery to the task, the dates will move up.
The gantt chart has been around for a long time, but it is still quite useful to show progress.
Cheers,
B
I like the idea but seems bit complicated in case of long projects involving numerous activity.
Also, reading and explaining is required hence not feasible where plans are just send to audience for approval.
Cheers
SY
Great idea Chandoo,
When I was reading this idea regarding delivery dates, another thought popped into my mind, how can you show the uncertainty with MONEY!!
In this case, applies to cost management or even a normal budget, you think?
Would Box Chart and Gannt Chart help to understand the best case, middle case and worst case when money is spend or planned with these three risks are involved?
I imagine that this chart could help people who write their budgets get a better understanding of risks affecting their spending.
Peter
Chandoo,
I like it. How would you display an entry once it has been completed (actual)?
Thank you,
Matt
From what you have shown so far I think that this box Gantt chart is awesome! I think that this could be an extremely useful tool.
I can't wait to learn how to make my own charts in Excel.
Will the methods that you are going to teach us work in 2003 as well?
[...] Firday, we proposed a new chart for showing project plans. I chose an ugly name for it and called it Gantt Box [...]
You need to read Eli Goldratt's Critical Chain. The uncertainty you are looking for should be accounted for in a project buffer. Not at each task level.
Further you should spend time understanding Agile Development. This would have you plan only in 1-3week iterations. This allows you to embrace changes to work not yet started, and for your customer to re-direct your course at regular intervals (after each iteration) throughout your project. keyword search: Agile Scrum
These items will show you that you are solving a tracking problem for something that you can entirely avoid!
[…] Chandoo.org’s Gantt Box Chart. […]