Book Image

Data Forecasting and Segmentation Using Microsoft Excel

By : Fernando Roque
Book Image

Data Forecasting and Segmentation Using Microsoft Excel

By: Fernando Roque

Overview of this book

Data Forecasting and Segmentation Using Microsoft Excel guides you through basic statistics to test whether your data can be used to perform regression predictions and time series forecasts. The exercises covered in this book use real-life data from Kaggle, such as demand for seasonal air tickets and credit card fraud detection. You’ll learn how to apply the grouping K-means algorithm, which helps you find segments of your data that are impossible to see with other analyses, such as business intelligence (BI) and pivot analysis. By analyzing groups returned by K-means, you’ll be able to detect outliers that could indicate possible fraud or a bad function in network packets. By the end of this Microsoft Excel book, you’ll be able to use the classification algorithm to group data with different variables. You’ll also be able to train linear and time series models to perform predictions and forecasts based on past data.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1 – An Introduction to Machine Learning Functions
5
Part 2 – Grouping Data to Find Segments and Outliers
10
Part 3 – Simple and Multiple Linear Regression Analysis
14
Part 4 – Predicting Values with Time Series

Exploring the variables with more influence

In this section, we will undertake a multi-regression exercise exploring the variables that could influence the sales revenue of a business. Please download the Excel worksheet from the Technical requirements section at the beginning of this chapter. Open the Sales inventory sheet. The first task of the job is to find which are the two most influential variables, X and Y, over a sales-revenue results variable. The variables on the worksheet that could influence sales and revenue are as follows:

  • Number of hours out of service
  • Material rotation
  • Online marketing
  • Sector sales
  • Distance (Km) to competing stores

To find the two most influential variables, follow this process:

  • Use the t-statistics and the p-value analysis returned by the regression function. To validate the variables, examine the 3D chart and ascertain whether there is an obvious relationship between them.
  • Understand the influence of...