This document discusses the challenges and methodologies associated with teaching responsible data analysis using Excel, highlighting the prevalent errors in spreadsheet usage among both novice and experienced users. An analysis of ten textbooks revealed significant gaps in teaching practices, as none fully addressed the necessary methodologies to create proficient Excel users. The author advocates for a shift in teaching focus from superficial use of features to developing deeper analytical and logical skills in students.

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Textbooks for Responsible Data Analysis in Excel
Nathan Garrett
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Published online: 26 Feb 2015.
To cite this article: Nathan Garrett (2015): Textbooks for Responsible Data Analysis in Excel, Journal of Education for
Business, DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2015.1007908
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2. Textbooks for Responsible Data Analysis in Excel
Nathan Garrett
Woodbury University, Burbank, California, USA
With 27 million users, Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Seattle, WA) is the most common
business data analysis software. However, audits show that almost all complex spreadsheets
have errors. The author examined textbooks to understand why responsible data analysis is
taught. A purposeful sample of 10 textbooks was coded, and then compared against
spreadsheet development best practices. The results show a wide range of approaches, and
reveal that none of the 10 books fully cover the methodologies needed to create well-
rounded Excel data analysts. There is a need to re-evaluate the teaching approaches being
used in office application courses.
Keywords: data analysis, Excel, spreadsheet, textbooks
Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Seattle, WA) is the most
popular data analysis tool used in business, with estimates
suggesting 27 million users (Scaffidi, Shaw, & Myers,
2005). Excel fills a vital role in most companies, with 80–
90% of firms using spreadsheets in mission-critical finan-
cial reporting and forecasting (Panko & Port, 2012).
The problem is that Excel, for all its ubiquity, is almost
always used badly. A synthesis of audit reports (Kruck,
2006) show that 75% find an error rate above 35%, with a
median value of 50%. Other audit approaches have found
that 85–100% of Excel spreadsheets contain errors (Panko
& Port, 2012).
Few companies test spreadsheets thoroughly, and those
with formal policies are rarely followed (Panko & Port,
2012). This has resulted in a range of horror stories, from
the inadvertent release of sensitive information, to range
errors reversing GPD growth rates, or even incorrect bids
that lose millions of dollars (European Spreadsheet Risks
Interest Group, 2014).
Worryingly, experience with Excel is not a predictor of
success. Comparing master of business administration
(MBA) students with minimal Excel experience against
those with more than 250 hours shows no difference in
error rates (Panko & Sprague, 1999). Professional research-
ers are not exempt. The conclusions from (Reinhart & Rog-
off, 2010) were featured in the Wall Street Journal, NPR,
The Economist, and BusinessWeek, and were heavily cited
in justifying austerity policies (Coy, 2014). However, the
underlying Excel data set contained a range error, that
when corrected, changed high-debt country growth rates
from –0.3% to C2.6% (Konczal, 2013).
Why do experienced Excel users not have lower error
rates? One suggestion may be the way Excel is taught as an
application, and not as programming. Vandeput (2009)
explained this:
[T]he use of software in order to carry out a task is often
considered like a practical process devoid of any intelligent
approach. . . . For instance, the use of a word processing
program is considered by lots of people like a sequence of
elementary commands. . . . So the trainer will insist on the
graphical elements of the environment (menus, buttons,
checkboxes . . . ) and on graphical aspects of the process
results. (p. 2)
Excel users struggle with deep knowledge. New Excel
tends to be locked in the menu bar or menu items and have
a button pushing mentality (Tort, 2010). While able to do
superficial manipulations, they have trouble with tasks
requiring deep knowledge, particularly with formulas (Tort,
2010). Questions posted in online forums show that users
struggle with foundation issues, such as how to set up a
problem, and ask fewer feature-based questions (Chambers,
Sommers, & Scaffidi, 2012).
Spreadsheet courses should focus on turning students
into professional Excel analysts. Instead of training that
focuses on surface-level graphic elements or new features,
we should encourage the teaching of professional
Correspondence should be addressed to Nathan Garrett, Woodbury
University, School of Business, 7500 N. Glenoaks Boulevard, Burbank,
CA 91504, USA. E-mail: Nathan.Garrett@woodbury.edu
JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS, 0: 1–6, 2015
Copyright Ó Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0883-2323 print / 1940-3356 online
DOI: 10.1080/08832323.2015.1007908
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3. quantitative and analytic skills. There is a significant differ-
ence between professional and amateur approaches, as the
following quote from Weinberg (1998) explains:
The amateur [programmer], being committed to the results
of the particular program for his own purposes, is looking
for a way to get the job done. If he runs into difficulty, all
he wants is to surmount it—the manner of doing so is of lit-
tle consequence. Not so, however, for the professional [pro-
grammer]. He may well be aware of numerous ways of
circumnavigating the problem at hand. . . . But his work
does not stop there; it begins there. It begins because he
must understand why he did not understand, in order that he
may prepare himself for the programs he may someday
write which will require that understanding. (p. 125)
Excel courses should teach logical thinking, and not but-
ton pushing. This view is supported by a study showing that
training in Excel was linked to an increase in logical skills,
as measured by the ETS Diagramming Relationships test
(Kruck, Maher, & Barkhi, 2003). Importantly, students’
logical skills were related with their success in producing
error-free spreadsheets.
This project examines a selection of books to see how
they teach Excel. Do they teach software development
methodologies? Which best practices are covered? Which
books target superficial features and button clicking, and
which target deep knowledge and skills?
LITERATURE REVIEW
Research literature on Excel data analysis can be separated
into lifecycle methodology and spreadsheet features
sections.
Lifecycle Methodology
Spreadsheet modeling is the combination of technical skills
(executing a narrowly defined task), as well as a craft skill
(prototyping and simplifying a complex problem) (Powell
& Baker, 2013). As users develop a spreadsheet, they are
actively engaged in a problem exploration and discovery
process (Nardi & Miller, 1990, 1991).
As a result, prespecification of the spreadsheet may not
be advisable, or even possible. As Ronen, Palley, and Lucas
(1989) said, “one of the major advantages of spreadsheets is
their ease of use . . . [a]dvocating more formal approaches to
spreadsheet design may be viewed by some as a step back-
wards” (p. 84). An agile process (Powell & Baker, 2013)
has the following repeating phases: explore the mess,
search for information, identify a problem, search for solu-
tions, evaluate solutions, and implement solutions.
Because Excel relies on spatial organization, properly
laying out cells can be a way of conveying information
(Bewig, 2005; Rajalingham, Chadwick, & Knight, 2001;
Rajalingham, Chadwick, Knight, & Edwards, 2000; Ronen
et al., 1989). Some common approaches to improving this
layout can be called block structuring.
Block structuring can be done through a variety of
approaches:
Use a separate sheet for input, calculation, and outputs
(Bewig, 2005);
Only refer to cells above and to the left (Powell
Baker, 2013; Read Batson, 1999); or
For each row, use only a single formula copied over
from left to right (Bewig, 2005; Read Batson,
1999).
There is empirical support for the usefulness of a block
structuring approach. Surveys have found that heavier users
of Excel followed these rules to a larger degree than novice
users (Baker Powell, 2006). Experiments with students
have shown that following block rules doubles their rate of
error detection (Rajalingham et al., 2001). Several popular
financial modeling methodologies also recommend block
structuring (Grossman Ozluk, 2010).
Testing is an essential part of a methodology. Finding
errors is difficult, with individual code inspections of indi-
vidual cells finding only 63% of errors, and group inspec-
tions catching only 83% of errors (Panko, 1999). Cell-by-
cell inspection by a group is the only proven technique
to catch most of the errors (Panko, 2000). There is a range
of common problems, but they often involve formulas and
cell reference errors (Hendry Green, 1994).
High Excel error rates are a natural result of human
errors rates and cognition (Panko, 2000). Humans average
between 2–5% errors on tasks in general, and when consid-
ering the number of formulas in a complex sheet, this natu-
rally results in significant numbers of errors. Unlike
writing, where a single error may lie unnoticed, a spread-
sheet’s cumulative nature means that an error in any part of
the chain results in cascading errors toward final results.
Research on error rates has shown that no studies of spread-
sheets has shown that errors are rare or of low significance
(Powell, Baker, Lawson, 2008).
A significant problem with spreadsheet development is
developer overconfidence (Panko, 2000, 2003). In particu-
lar, novice users rely too much on quantitative data, have
little abstract conceptualization, and do not check their own
work (Powell Willemain, 2006; Willemain Powell,
2006).
Fortunately, addressing student overconfidence can be
effective. Panko (2003) was able to reduce overconfidence
by providing a warning as to the error rates in solving an
Excel problem. This decreased the rate of solutions with
errors from 93% to 73%.
Last, documentation of Excel spreadsheets is an essen-
tial part of any methodology. Documentation may be
expressed as a how-to sheet (Bewig, 2005; Read Batson,
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4. 1999), or in comment cells (Powell Baker, 2013). While
spreadsheets may start with a single user, many are shared
in larger groups (Nardi Miller, 1990, 1991). Documenta-
tion is key to ensuring spreadsheets remain free from error.
Spreadsheet Features
Most spreadsheets are used to store lists of data (Chambers
Scaffidi, 2010). A sample of 400 spreadsheets from the
End-Users Shaping Effective Software (EUSES) Spreadsheet
Corpus provides a detailed breakdown (Chambers, Scaffidi,
Sommers, 2010). A total of 56% of the spreadsheets were
used for data entry, contained tabular data, and frequently
had no formulas. 25% of the spreadsheets were used as data-
bases, contained mostly text tabular data, and had no formu-
las or charts. The remaining 19% were used for data
visualization, data entry, or a combination of purposes.
One survey asked Excel users what features they used
most (Lawson, Baker, Powell, Foster-Johnson, 2009).
Ranked from most popular to least, they included the fol-
lowing: if, data sort, chart wizard, find and replace, lookup,
financial functions, conditional formatting, macros, formula
auditing tools, pivot tables, data tables, solver, and goal
seek. Another study found that the following features were
used occasionally or higher: if, data sort, chart wizard, find
and replace, financial functions, and the function wizard
(Baker Powell, 2006). Features used at lower rates
included conditional formatting, macros, formula auditing,
pivot tables, data table tool, solver, and goal seek (Baker
Powell, 2006).
Beyond simply identifying the most commonly used fea-
tures, how can we best use formulas, shortcuts, and
formatting?
First, formulas are frequently the most error-prone sec-
tions of workbooks. As a result, a number of guidelines pro-
mote ways to improve their auditability. Some of the most
basic guidelines include the following:
Break complex formulas into multiple cells (Gross-
man Ozluk, 2010; Powell Baker, 2013; Read
Batson, 1999);
Do not hard-code constants into formulas (Powell
Baker, 2013); and
Protect formula so users cannot manually overwrite
them with hard-coded variables (Panko, 2000).
Second, keyboard shortcuts can promote low error rates
and speed development time. FAST and OPERIS method-
ologies stress the need to learn keyboard shortcuts to enable
best practices and reduce errors (Grossman Ozluk,
2010). Shortcuts are particularly useful in creating block
structures, and encourage users to have the same formulas
throughout a single column or row.
Third, formatting is an effective way to signal data and
meaning, as opposed simply providing decoration (Gross-
man Ozluk, 2010; Powell Baker, 2013; Raffensperger,
2001). For example, formulas may use a consistent back-
ground color, and cells linking to other sheets a different
font. Borders, font, and colors can all act as signals.
STUDY DESIGN
This goal of this study was to catalog the range of ways that
Excel is taught. It was not designed to provide a representa-
tive sample of textbooks, or to evaluate the effectiveness
of the different approaches. Instead, its purpose was to cata-
log the range of approaches, and compare these approaches
to the existing literature on best practices.
I chose all textbooks suitable for a first semester course
on Microsoft Office. I excluded books that were exclusively
quick references, second or third courses, or touch-based
interface only.
Data Gathering
This project began by selecting a purposeful sample of
Microsoft Office textbooks. A list was created through
searches of retailers, publishers, and Office Application
course syllabi. This list included both college-focused
books, as well as more practitioner-oriented and popular
press introductions. After creating a list, a subset was
selected for analysis. The subset (shown in Table 1)
included at least one textbook from each major publisher or
series, and included a range of authors.
Coding
I read and coded each book. The coding scheme was further
developed during the process, which required each book to
be analyzed at least twice to ensure accuracy. These codes
used are described in the following list.
Pedagogical approach.
Conceptual: Do books explain the concepts behind a
feature, or only give a step-by-step process? Books
are coded as conceptual (no step-by-step instructions
are given), mixed, and step by step (no conceptual
information is given).
Implementation details: Do books assume that Excel
works properly? Books are coded as assume all fea-
tures work, limitations given, and limitations and
work-around given.
Lifecycle: Do books follow a lifecycle model, or do
they only provide individual illustrations? Books are
coded as lifecycle, extended example, or illustration.
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5. Lifecycle approach.
Lifecycle: Do books model a lifecycle approach?
Block structuring: Do books explain how to layout
data? Are assumptions separated from calculations,
and outputs place on a separate sheet?
Documentation: Do books explain the need to com-
ment a spreadsheet?
Test: Do books show how to test or debug a
spreadsheet?
RESULTS
The following section presents the results of the coding
analysis.
Pedagogical Approach
The books have diverse pedagogical approaches, but can be
separated into three groups (shown in Table 2).
A third use a lifecycle approach with mixed step-by-step
and conceptual explanations. These books guide students
through problem description, design requirements, data
input, visualization, and printing. Two examples of this
approach include Vermaat (2013) and O’Leary and
O’Leary (2013).
The second third use illustrative examples and con-
ceptual explanations. These comprehensive references
did not present overall development methodologies.
Instead, they described the value of individual features,
and give limitations and work-arounds. Conner and
MacDonald’s (2013) is good example of this approach.
For example, it is the only text that explains that sub-
tracting a larger time from a smaller time will result in
a ##### error message.
The remaining books use a variety of approaches. For
example, Gaskin, Martin, Graviett, Marks, and Geoghan
(2013) used a lifecycle approach, but has step-by-step
explanations with minimal conceptual information.
Lifecycle Methodology
Lifecycle. Only two books model and explain a life-
cycle development approach. While some books show a
lifecycle approach, most do not explain why a structured
approach is important.
Many of the features needed for accurate documentation
are ignored. For example, only three books present the
comment feature. Only one book stresses the need for
documentation.
Most disappointingly, only one book suggests auditing
spreadsheets for errors. None of the books present error
rates, or provide examples of what can go wrong when a
spreadsheet is shared among multiple developers.
Block structuring. Unfortunately, the textbooks fall
short in providing guidelines for good spatial layout. While
good practices are sometimes modeled, their justification
and explanation are almost entirely absent. While three sep-
arate assumptions from calculations, only Vermaat (2013)
explains why this is important. Two books separate calcula-
tions from output, but rely upon the reader to understand
why.
Nine of the books show how to manage summary data
sheets, but two do not show how to manage lists. Pivot
tables are also mainly absent, with only four books showing
how they work.
Using spreadsheets as what-if tools is common, with five
books providing a walkthrough of changing input parame-
ters to impact output cells.
Documentation. Almost without exception, books do
not show how to document a spreadsheet. Only Vermaat
(2013) explained the need for documentation, or shows for-
matting as conveying meaning (instead of as decoration).
The comment feature is only shown in three books. Using
styles to show the purpose of cells is the most popular docu-
mentation feature. Seven books present information about
cell styles, though they are generally explained as decora-
tion and not documentation.
TABLE 1
Books Analyzed
Publisher Book title
Cengage Microsoft Office 2013: Illustrated Introductory, First Course, 1st ed. (Beskeen, 2013)
Cengage Discovering Computers Microsoft Office 2013: A Fundamental Combined Approach (Vermaat, 2013)
McGraw Hill The O’Leary Series: Microsoft Office 2013: A Case Approach (O’Leary O’Leary, 2013)
Pearson GO! With Microsoft Office 2013 (Gaskin, Martin, Graviett, Marks, Geoghan, 2013)
For Dummies Office 2013 for Dummies (Wang, 2013)
For Dummies Office 2013 All-In-One for Dummies (Weverka, 2013)
Wiley Office 2013 Bible: The Comprehensive Tutorial Resource (Bucki, Walkenbach, Alexander, Kusleika, Wempen, 2013)
O’Reilly Media Office 2013: The Missing Manual (Conner MacDonald, 2013)
Microsoft Press Microsoft Office Professional 2013 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft)) (Melton et al., 2013)
Microsoft Press Microsoft Office 2013 Inside Out (Bott Siechert, 2013)
4 N. GARRETT
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6. Test. None of the books present information on error
rates. Only Vermaat (2013) strongly supported the need to
audit an Excel sheet for errors. When it comes to error mes-
sages, the books tend to be more successful. Half explain
all of the basic # error messages (such as #ref or ######).
A majority of the books teach debugging tools. Half show
how to print formulas, and seven show the controlC»
shortcut that reveals formulas. Some strategies for data val-
idation and protection are shown. Six books show how to
hide a sheet, and three how to protect a sheet. Four show
the data validation feature.
CONCLUSION
How well do the books teach professional spreadsheet anal-
ysis? This analysis has found a surprising range of
approaches, but they can be roughly grouped into three
categories.
First, some books teach Excel primarily in terms of fea-
ture-oriented step-by-step processes. For example, Gaskin
et al. (2013) and Wang (2013) walk the user through a series
of steps, but rarely explain why or when to use each feature.
While users with a background in data management and soft-
ware development may find these texts useful, novice users
without this background will be left with significant gaps.
Second, the best reference books (Bucki, Walkenbach,
Alexander, Kusleika, Wempen, 2013; Conner Mac-
Donald, 2013; Melton et al., 2013) show why, when, and
how to use individual features. But, they do not show how
to combine these features into a larger design methodology.
Third, some books teach solid methodology. Unfortu-
nately, the two best methodology books do not show how
to use Excel for managing lists (and ignore the filter and
sort functions). This is a critical gap, since Excel is gener-
ally used to manage lists.
All of the analyzed books require supplements. These
include the following:
Lifecycle methodology,
Excel error rates, auditing, and documentation
approaches,
Data normalization, and
Block formatting rules.
Teaching Excel as a point-and-click tool, or only exam-
ining individual features in isolation, results in amateur
excel programmers who understand features, but do not
know how to tie these features together. The universally
high error rates found in the field show the need for improv-
ing the state of instruction. Curriculum needs to reflect a
professional approach. Without this shift, amateur work
will continue to be the norm.
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TABLE 2
Pedagogy, Conceptual, and Implementation Details
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4
P
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