Resources

Textbooks

• George Mount (2023). Modern Data Analytics in Excel: Using Power Query, Power Pivot, and Dynamic Arrays. O'Reilly Media. Main text.
• Dan Remenyi, George Onofrei, Joseph English (2009). An Introduction to Statistics using Microsoft Excel. Academic Publishing International.
• H. Barreto (2021). Business Analytics with Excel — Gateway to Business Analytics. PALNI Open Press (open access).
• S. Christian Albright, Wayne L. Winston (2017). Data Analysis and Decision Making with Microsoft Excel. Cengage Learning.

Software

You need Microsoft Excel installed before Week 1. Google Sheets is accepted for most exercises except Lab 2 (Power Query is Excel-specific).

• Microsoft Excel (Microsoft 365 recommended; Excel 2021 minimum)
• Google Sheets (acceptable alternative for most exercises)
• Microsoft account and Canvas/LMS login
• Excel Online for cloud-based collaboration

Verify Power Query is available:

Open Excel → Data tab → look for "Get Data". If it is missing, your Excel version is too old (must be 2016 or later) or Power Query was not installed. Upgrade to Microsoft 365 if possible.

Datasets

Lab datasets

Lab datasets are available on Google Drive (links in each lab assignment):

• Lab 1: Product Inventory dataset (provided in class)
• Lab 2: Store Sales Orders — Google Drive
• Lab 3: EDA dataset — Google Drive
• Lab 4: Visualization dataset — Google Drive
• Lab 5: Statistical analysis dataset — Google Drive

Practice & project datasets

Good starting points for your group project:

• Kaggle Datasets — large selection; filter by format "CSV"
• World Bank Open Data — macroeconomic and development indicators
• Vietnam Statistics Office — national statistics
• OECD Data — international comparisons
• GitHub Practice Datasets for Excel — curated Excel-ready datasets

A usable project dataset has at least 200 rows, clearly named columns, and a concrete analytical question worth answering.

Microsoft Excel help

• Excel Video Training — Microsoft Support
• Power Query documentation — Microsoft
• Excel function reference — Microsoft Support

LaTeX / report writing

The Week 12 lecture covers professional report writing. If you plan to use LaTeX for your final report:

• Overleaf — browser-based LaTeX editor, no installation needed
• LaTeX Install Guide (Windows: VS Code + LaTeX Workshop) — provided in class materials

Course infrastructure

• LMS (Canvas): Assignment submission, announcements, recorded lectures
• Email: Contact the instructor at nghiant@neu.edu.vn
• TA: For lab troubleshooting contact khanhld@neu.edu.vn