Excel 2010 Data Analysis and Business Modeling Third Edition by Wayne L Winston offers an impressive amount of real applied knowledge within a handy volume. Winston delivers an authoritative and exhaustive tome that functions as a superb reference source – the breadth of material covered is very impressive. It is quite apparent that the third iteration has made for a finely tuned volume. The structure of chapters provides a semi-cookbook style beginning with a ‘Questions answered in this chapter’ section which gives a useful and applied scope to each chapter. There follow very useful hands-on examples, with concluding ‘test’ questions to reinforce the lesson. Chapter length is short and to the point.
Overall, the ‘lessons’ are delivered succinctly and with direct application, which I found very useful. Although it is targeted at Excel 2010 and I am 2011 on OSX user, much of it was immediately practicable and I could make allowances for slight user interface variances, thus making this a good tool for both Windows and OSX users. This is not the sort of book that you read from beginning to end, but rather a reference source to give you a solution to the problem at hand.
From a didactic standpoint, this volume does provide a good grounding in the principles behind the analysis and ways in which you can interpret the results generated by Excel. Although it begins very much like an Excel manual to establish a basing grounding in necessary functions and Excel’s way of doing things it quickly adopts a strategy to address real business modeling and data analysis challenges and chapters gear themselves towards these practicalities. This is a hefty volume and directed towards hands-on business professionals with a specific application.
