Learn Excel 2016 for OS X, Second Edition

Chapter    11

Solving Business Questions with What-If Analysis, Goal Seek, and Solver

For much of your work with Excel, you’ll probably want to manipulate the hard data you already have, as you’ve been doing so far in the book. But at other times, you’ll need to ask questions of your data—for example, by how much do you need to raise prices to boost your revenue by a certain amount, or what will happen if you cut 10 percent off your manufacturing costs?

In this chapter, we’ll look at four tools Excel gives you for performing what-if analysis:

• Data tables. Use a data table when you want to assess the impact of one or two variables on a calculation.
• Scenarios. Use scenarios when you want to experiment with different data in your worksheet without ...