Excel | Towards Data Science https://towardsdatascience.com/tag/excel/ Publish AI, ML & data-science insights to a global community of data professionals. Mon, 15 Dec 2025 20:49:55 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 https://towardsdatascience.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/cropped-Favicon-32x32.png Excel | Towards Data Science https://towardsdatascience.com/tag/excel/ 32 32 The Machine Learning “Advent Calendar” Day 15: SVM in Excel https://towardsdatascience.com/the-machine-learning-advent-calendar-day-15-svm-in-excel/ Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:41:01 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/?p=607912 Instead of starting with margins and geometry, this article builds the Support Vector Machine step by step from familiar models. By changing the loss function and reusing regularization, SVM appears naturally as a linear classifier trained by optimization. This perspective unifies logistic regression, SVM, and other linear models into a single, coherent framework.

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]]> The Machine Learning “Advent Calendar” Day 10: DBSCAN in Excel https://towardsdatascience.com/the-machine-learning-advent-calendar-day-10-dbscan-in-excel/ Wed, 10 Dec 2025 16:30:00 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/?p=607882 DBSCAN shows how far we can go with a very simple idea: count how many neighbors live close to each point.
It finds clusters and marks anomalies without any probabilistic model, and it works beautifully in Excel.
But because it relies on one fixed radius, HDBSCAN is needed to make the method robust on real data.

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]]> The Machine Learning “Advent Calendar” Day 4: k-Means in Excel https://towardsdatascience.com/the-machine-learning-advent-calendar-day-4-k-means-in-excel/ Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:30:00 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/?p=607826 How to implement a training algorithm that finally looks like “real” machine learning

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]]> The Machine Learning “Advent Calendar” Day 1: k-NN Regressor in Excel https://towardsdatascience.com/day-1-k-nn-regressor-in-excel-how-distance-drives-prediction/ Mon, 01 Dec 2025 19:52:19 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/?p=607778 This first day of the Advent Calendar introduces the k-NN regressor, the simplest distance-based model. Using Excel, we explore how predictions rely entirely on the closest observations, why feature scaling matters, and how heterogeneous variables can make distances meaningless. Through examples with continuous and categorical features, including the California Housing and Diamonds datasets, we see the strengths and limitations of k-NN, and why defining the right distance is essential to reflect real-world structure.

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]]> Understanding Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) Through Excel https://towardsdatascience.com/understanding-convolutional-neural-networks-cnns-through-excel/ Mon, 17 Nov 2025 19:54:54 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/?p=607662 Deep learning is often seen as a black box. We know that it learns from data, but we rarely stop to ask how it truly learns.
What if we could open that box and watch each step happen right before our eyes?
With Excel, we can do exactly that, see how numbers turn into patterns, and how simple calculations become the foundation of what we call “deep learning.”
In this article, we will build a tiny Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) directly in Excel to understand, step by step, how machines detect shapes, patterns, and meaning in images.

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]]> Generating Data Dictionary for Excel Files Using OpenPyxl and AI Agents https://towardsdatascience.com/generating-data-dictionary-for-excel-files-using-openpyxl-and-ai-agents/ Thu, 08 May 2025 05:16:40 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/?p=605948 Automate Excel Documentation with AI: Leveraging OpenPyxl and Generative AI to create data dictionaries. Learn how to harness AI agents to add column descriptions and metadata to your Excel files, boosting transparency and collaboration.

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]]> Information at a Glance: Do Your Charts Suck? https://towardsdatascience.com/information-at-a-glance-do-your-charts-suck-8b4167a18b88/ Wed, 04 Dec 2024 12:01:01 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/information-at-a-glance-do-your-charts-suck-8b4167a18b88/ How pre-attentive processing, Gestalt theory, and visual data encoding inform data design decisions

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]]> Think you Know Excel? Take Your Analytics Skills to the Next Level with Power Query! https://towardsdatascience.com/think-you-know-excel-take-your-analytics-skills-to-the-next-level-with-power-query-930e2267006e/ Fri, 29 Nov 2024 16:09:48 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/think-you-know-excel-take-your-analytics-skills-to-the-next-level-with-power-query-930e2267006e/ 5 practical use cases that prove Power Query is worth exploring.

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]]> Reporting in Excel Could Be Costing Your Business More Than You Think – Here’s How to Fix It… https://towardsdatascience.com/reporting-in-excel-could-be-costing-your-business-more-than-you-think-heres-how-to-fix-it-aa40c0020131/ Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:08:23 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/reporting-in-excel-could-be-costing-your-business-more-than-you-think-heres-how-to-fix-it-aa40c0020131/ Discover how you can save hours, eliminate costly data errors, and free up your team to focus on insights that drive real business growth

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]]> Your eCommerce product performance reports are probably misleading you https://towardsdatascience.com/your-ecommerce-product-performance-reports-are-probably-misleading-you-d6146734639c/ Mon, 14 Oct 2024 08:16:35 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/your-ecommerce-product-performance-reports-are-probably-misleading-you-d6146734639c/ Why single metrics in isolation fall short and how Weighted Composite Scoring can transform your business insights

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]]> Managing Pivot Table and Excel Charts with VBA https://towardsdatascience.com/managing-pivot-table-and-excel-charts-with-vba-3dc5d672dff0/ Tue, 18 Jun 2024 18:33:34 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/managing-pivot-table-and-excel-charts-with-vba-3dc5d672dff0/ Save precious hours by automating working with pivot tables and charts using VBA

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]]> Arrays in Python and Excel VBA https://towardsdatascience.com/arrays-in-python-and-excel-vba-efd73b649d6d/ Tue, 23 Jan 2024 18:50:40 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/arrays-in-python-and-excel-vba-efd73b649d6d/ Learning about arrays through simple examples

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]]> Interactive Dashboards in Excel https://towardsdatascience.com/interactive-dashboards-in-excel-4f92e2ee6494/ Thu, 05 Oct 2023 06:29:50 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/interactive-dashboards-in-excel-4f92e2ee6494/ Using the pioneer data analytics software

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]]> Creating a Project Updates Tracker in Excel Using VBA https://towardsdatascience.com/creating-a-project-updates-tracker-in-excel-using-vba-c085e6fe05a8/ Sat, 02 Sep 2023 01:33:35 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/creating-a-project-updates-tracker-in-excel-using-vba-c085e6fe05a8/ Three simple steps to track project updates in Excel and log them

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]]> Supercharged pandas: Encrypting Excel Files Written from DataFrames https://towardsdatascience.com/supercharged-pandas-encrypting-excel-files-written-from-dataframes-1251b585145b/ Mon, 12 Jun 2023 18:55:42 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/supercharged-pandas-encrypting-excel-files-written-from-dataframes-1251b585145b/ Introducing an ExcelHelper class which allows you to encrypt Excel files with a strong password or a password of your choice

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]]> Running Python via Excel VBA -a Case of Time Series Resampling https://towardsdatascience.com/running-python-via-excel-vba-a-case-of-time-series-resampling-fe108610e4e4/ Mon, 17 Apr 2023 13:39:09 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/running-python-via-excel-vba-a-case-of-time-series-resampling-fe108610e4e4/ A comprehensive assessment of time series resampling of solar irradiance using VBA, using Python, and using Python via Excel VBA

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]]> A complete word processing with Python https://towardsdatascience.com/a-complete-word-processing-with-python-ac4e66963f40/ Wed, 25 Jan 2023 12:45:48 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/a-complete-word-processing-with-python-ac4e66963f40/ Reading pdf file, utilizing regular expressions, exporting to Excel and Word document, and converting it back to pdf format

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]]> Learning Python for Data Science On-the-Job, Part 2: Practice https://towardsdatascience.com/learning-python-for-data-science-on-the-job-part-2-practice-b4ece80488da/ Sun, 15 Jan 2023 22:44:14 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/learning-python-for-data-science-on-the-job-part-2-practice-b4ece80488da/ Welcome to Part 2 of this series of articles about learning Python and Data Science on-the-job, or without formal education. Part 1 talked about some of my experience over the past 10 years of learning both on-the-job and in formal education settings. If you’re interested in philosophy of learning and some ideas for how to […]

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]]> Tips and Tricks for Loading Excel Spreadsheets into Pandas DataFrames https://towardsdatascience.com/tips-and-tricks-for-loading-excel-spreadsheets-into-pandas-dataframes-c486ac1ed16f/ Fri, 30 Dec 2022 01:29:07 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/tips-and-tricks-for-loading-excel-spreadsheets-into-pandas-dataframes-c486ac1ed16f/ Learn how to properly load your worksheets into Pandas DataFrames

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]]> Supercharged pandas: Reading from and Writing to Excel https://towardsdatascience.com/supercharged-pandas-reading-from-and-writing-to-excel-9379f39db4b3/ Mon, 12 Sep 2022 19:37:06 +0000 https://towardsdatascience.com/supercharged-pandas-reading-from-and-writing-to-excel-9379f39db4b3/ Enhancing .read_excel & .to_excel methods to allow you to focus on data exploration

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