 Hi, I'm Don Wright and I am one of the instructors teaching Business 431 Business Data Analysis for Excelsior College. Please excuse me for wearing my PhD regalia. It is expensive and I only get to wear it once, but if you come up for graduation you'll see a lot of folks dressed like me. This is an entirely new version of the 0430 Quantitative Methods course and we think you will find it interesting, worthwhile and challenging. The goal of this course is to give you skills which should help you be data savvy. I have been using spreadsheets in business for a long time. In fact, I began on the very first spreadsheet software which was called VisiCalc. I was taking a finance course in my MBA program and my professor told me about the breakthrough of two MBA students at Harvard. After watching him literally fly through our assignments on his VisiCalc, assignments which took me days to do manually on a paper spreadsheet, I plunked down my money and bought an Apple II which came bundled with VisiCalc. I am convinced that my knowing how to use spreadsheet software led to my rapid advance in my company. I remain convinced that having good spreadsheet skills is important if you want to advance in a business or management career. A recent study by Burning Glass Technologies in Capital One shows that digital skills such as Excel lead to higher income and better employment opportunities. This course is about using Excel to turn raw data and information that can be used to make better business decisions. Why Excel and not some other spreadsheet software? Excel is used by over 750 million users worldwide. It is the de facto standard, simple as that. No matter whether you work for small business or large business, whether you are an HR professional, an engineer, a sales manager, marketing analysis, warehouse manager or anyone in finance or accounting, you need to know Excel. And once you know Excel, jumping to another spreadsheet program is not difficult. We are going to start with Excel basics and move quickly to more advanced techniques. You will learn how to insert data and formulas and format worksheets to make them communicate more effectively. You will learn how to use Excel's wonderful pivot table tools to rapidly and efficiently manipulate large data sets to find just the data you need for your analysis without needless and time consuming sorting, copying and pasting of subsets. You will learn how to quickly create graphs and charts to help you and your customers understand what the data is telling you. You will exercise the statistical skills you learned in introductory statistics using Excel's functions to run tests and produce graphics. You will learn how to create an interactive dashboard to provide effective visuals of key metrics. You will learn how to find optimum solutions using Excel's solver. In this problem, you will find a way to make your staff as happy as possible with their office assignments. You will learn how to incorporate risk and uncertainty in decision models using the Monte Carlo method. You will learn a lot of other ways Excel can help you in your career. Some recent students made these comments about learning how to use Excel for business data analysis. I find it fascinating how useful this material is across many parts of my profession and I enjoy using models to aid in making informed decisions. All in all, I can say that I have never looked at Excel the way I do now. I look forward to being able to more thoroughly use Excel to meet my needs both in my personal life and at work. Overall, this was a good course that shows how to incorporate Excel into real world life problems and decision making. This 431 will be challenging and will require a significant investment of your time and efforts but I believe you will leave this course better prepared for your future academic and professional careers. So put on your running shoes and let's get ready to exercise those Excel muscles.