Learning Generative AI Tools for Excel

Chapter 8. Basic Statistics with Copilot

I’ve always been passionate about cooking. Whether it’s sweet pastries or savory dishes, I like experimenting in the kitchen. But as every cook knows, having ingredients alone isn’t enough. You need the right proportions, the right timing, and the proper methods to bring them together into something worth serving.

Statistics works much the same way. Data, on its own, is just a collection of raw ingredients. Without the structure of statistical methods, the “recipes” that tell you how to measure, mix, and interpret, you can’t transform those ingredients into something useful.

In this chapter, we’ll explore how basic statistical thinking, paired with the capabilities of Copilot, can help you go from a jumble of raw numbers to clear, actionable insights. We will focus on descriptive statistics, but you can easily adapt the concepts described in this chapter to other types of statistics.

This chapter covers:

• An introduction to basic statistics

• Measures of central tendency

• Measures of dispersion

• Data distribution and shapes

• How to interpret statistical results

Let’s start with introducing basic statistics.

Introducing Basic Statistics

Basic statistics are typically grouped into three core categories:

Measures of central tendency

These summarize the center of a dataset using a single representative value.

Measures of dispersion

These quantify how much the data varies or spreads around that center.

Data distribution and shape ...