Preface

If you think of business analytics as a big city, then this book is a gateway to a crowded downtown with bright, neon lights. There is so much to see and do! Gateway to Business Analytics with Microsoft Excel shows you the sights via spreadsheets. This allows you to acquire a great deal of sophisticated, advanced Excel skills while sampling from a variety of engaging topics at an introductory level.

The use of Excel drives other innovations in this book. Spreadsheets require concrete, numerical problems instead of abstract functions and graphs. Constructing models takes time and effort, but the payoff is that you are able to see how changes in cells affect graphs and other results.

Business analytics is a rapidly growing subdiscipline that is not well defined. Content and level of presentation vary widely. This book delivers a coherent set of topics appropriate for first- or second-year college students. No specialized training in Excel, calculus, statistics, or programming is needed.

For example, instead of using calculus to solve optimization problems, we use Excel’s Solver. Instead of reading a description of gross domestic product (GDP) and national income accounting, we use the FRED Excel add-in to download data and show that equations like GDP = C + I + G + NX are really true.

I am a veteran economics professor, and I have written several books and many articles using Excel to teach economics. Excel-based teaching has really helped my students learn economic theory and econometrics. I am excited to try this approach to deliver content in business analytics.

May your intellectual journey be as rewarding and fun as it has been for me.

Humberto Barreto

hbarreto@depauw.edu

Greencastle, Indiana