Excel Project

In order to familiarize myself with Excel, I completed a project in class that dealt with a fitness center owner determining the effectiveness of a certain workout. There were 500 participants that did a 15 minute workout and a 5 minute cool down where their heart rate was recorded each minute. I created formulas based off the data provided to determine the participants' maximum heart rate, target heart rate, highest heart rate, whether their target heart rate was achieved, and their percentage increase in heart rate. I also had to format the data in different ways, including using freeze panes and headers.

The part of the exercise I felt was the most challenging was the formula created to determine whether the participant's target heart rate was achieved. I used the Excel =IF() function, where I used whether the value for the highest heart rate was greater or equal to the target heart rate. Then I used "Yes" as the answer if the logical test was true and "No" as the answer if the logical test was false. I had to look up the information in my notes from last weeks lectures, but once I was able to find it our and create the logical test based on what the fitness center owner wanted it was easy to put together.

The following screen shot from the project represents the average percent increase in heart rates for the subjects, organized by age and gender. I was able to learn a lot about using pivot tables by using data from the original worksheet.

The skills I learned with Excel through this project will help me enormously next time I have to do any sort of work with numbers. This project taught me how many different formulas you can use, as well as how to copy formulas (relative and absolute), and how to format Excel spreadsheets. I believe these tasks will prove to be very important in the business world and in the real world in general.