PUBPOL 5679

Desktop and Modeling Solutions

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2023-2024.

This course presents an advanced approach to data-intensive problem-solving using Microsoft Excel. Advanced concepts such as external queries, data tables, arrays, iterative techniques and macros will be reviewed. These will then be incorporated into an integrated business model. Emphasis will be on clear, separated input and output, data integrity, user interface design, documentation, maintainability, robustness and user support.

When Offered Fall, Spring.

Permission Note Fall: Enrollment limited to: Sloan students until the day before classes start.  Then enrollment will open to any Brooks School student. Spring: Enrollment limited to: CIPA students during pre-enroll.  After pre-enrollment seats will open to any Brooks School student.

• To master the vocabulary of personal computing.
• To understand the essentials of desktop and file management, especially with regard to security, safety, privacy and protection against data loss.
• To be able to discriminate between seemingly competing software applications (spreadsheet, database, etc...) and be able to select the best application, or combination of applications, suited to a particular task.
• To become highly proficient in the use of MS Office suite. The focus is on understanding the characteristics of each application and the tasks they are best suited to support.
• To become an effective technological problem-solver, capable of assessing an overall problem, and understanding what the best combination of software applications, tools and techniques are to address the problem.
• To expand students' Excel function vocabulary into the more flexible function categories, such as text parsing, time and date manipulation, index, lookup and array functions.
• To expand students' ability to work with compound and nested logic within Excel formulas.
• To learn how to implement data protection and validation strategy to maximize model robustness.
• To learn how to use macros to automate redundant data management tasks.
• To maximize understanding of Excel's charting engine in order to exploit advanced charting and graphing features. Outcome 11: To give students the experience and rigor of breaking a substantial problem down into its constituent pieces to allow for programmatic solution.

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