University of Dayton
MIS 366/MBA 667A ASSIGNMENT 3
See syllabus for due date.
This assignment weight is noted in the syllabus.
General Instructions
Please submit a Word document with your answers for this assignment, and the Excel
spreadsheet on which you did your work. Since you’re going to be using screen captures,
dropping the graphics into a Word Document would seem a pretty easy way to do this.
To enhance your understanding of what we’re doing, Assignments 3, 4 and 9 will allow you to
become familiar with three primary technologies for multi-dimensional analysis and basic OLAP
processing for BI: Excel Pivot tables; a sophisticated, popular, commercial BI software package
(MicroStrategy); and SQL with OLAP extensions, one of the most common languages still used
to extract and analyze data for BI. As a preview of coming attractions, Assignment 5 will use the
data mining capabilities of Excel (which is why I’m covering that before the assignment),
Assignment 7 will be about data mining in Teradata Data Miner, and Assignment 6 will be an
assignment using Tableau.
For now, let’s focus on Assignment 3. Assignment 3 will involve Excel Pivot Tables.
The purpose of this assignment is for you to gain an understanding of the multi-dimensional
analysis (pivot table) capabilities of Microsoft Excel. You may want to refer to the Collins and
the Ecklund readings in the OLD STUFF sub-folder under the Week 11 folder in Isidore and other
on-line examples on Excel Pivot Tables (Google Search “Excel Pivot Tables”) as background to
do this assignment. There are also some supplemental materials on Excel as a BI tool that might
be of help, but those tend to be more conceptual than tutorial.
For this part of the assignment, you are to submit a Word document containing the screen
captures and other information identified below. Be sure to label each screen capture with the
step number below (better yet, cut and paste this set of steps into your answer Word file and
then paste in screen captures to show the response to steps 2-12 and then include your writeup for step 13).
For Assignment #3, you are to:
1)
2)
Download the associated Excel file (List of holidays.xls – link right next to the this
Assignment information)
Using this file, create a pivot table showing the number (count of Price) of holidays
by Country (page), Resort Name (rows), and Travel Method (columns); capture the
screen of your created pivot table. I would create the table in a separate worksheet.
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
11)
12)
13)
Using the pivot table (and its tool bar), find the Holiday ID for the train holiday to
Barcelona – this is an example of drill thru to details. The result should be shown in a
separate worksheet tab; capture the screen of your resultant tab (your screen
should show the country, resort name, no of days, travel method, price, and holiday
ID for this holiday)
Using the drop-downs on your pivot table from Step 2), show the holidays only to
France – this is an example of slice and dice; capture the screen with this result
Using your pivot table from Step 2), add a second level of column dimension for No
of Days; capture the screen with this result
Change the values in the pivot table in Step 5) from count of Price to average Price;
capture the screen with this result
Remove No of Days as a dimension in the pivot table in Step 6); capture the screen
with this result
Change the values in the pivot table in Step 7) to % of column totals; capture the
screen with this result (explain why some values are above 100%)
Replace Resort Name with No of Days in the pivot table in Step 8); capture the
screen with this result
Convert the pivot table in Step 9) to a pivot chart with stacked column bars; capture
the screen (a new worksheet tab) with this result and explain/interpret what you see
in words
Change the vertical axis of the chart in Step 10) to be based on count of Price, not
average; capture the screen with this result and explain/interpret what you see in
words
Change chart format from Step 11) to 100% stacked column; capture the screen with
this result and explain/interpret what you see is words
Write a brief assessment of what you have learned about the capabilities of Excel
Pivot Tables
This assignment is meant to be pretty straightforward. However, in the unlikely case that
something is unclear in these instructions please advise me via email and I’ll clarify for you.
Also, the assignment is due on the date noted in the syllabus.