When working with a data set, naming the data set and then using INDEX() and MATCH() to find particular portions of the data is a very common task in Excel.

The MATCH() function can find a particular value in a range. It can be used with the INDEX() function to match particular columns or rows in a data range.

If we have a range of cells in a worksheet, we can access parts of the range by using the INDEX() function – the parameters are the range, the row(s), and the column(s)

We can use the column/row to address a cell (like C5), but we can also give meaningful names to individual cells, or groups of cells.

There are a number of statistical functions (see the statistics page), but here is a good set of functions to summarize a data set.

In the Data Analysis Toolpak, there is a tool that will compute the descriptive statistics for a data set. The calculations are just numbers (and not formulas) so if you change the data, you will have to rerun the tool.

The filter command allows you to take a data set and sort it using different columns and to select rows that meet your criteria (and hide the rest).