Pivot tables vs large data sets
Pivot tables can be EXTREMELY helpful when dealing with large data sets, for this assignment I have supplied the Excel template for you to use, however you must collect your own data. My spreadsheet is nothing fancy, you may certainly recreate one if you like or "dress-up" the one I have given you, just be sure it includes each data point required. We will be working in the commodity markets this week, a commodity market is where traders buy and sell commodities, a similar concept to the stock market. Commodities are raw materials or primary agricultural products, oil and gas, and metals etc... This is not a lesson on commodity markets or how to trade in this type of market, however it is relevant to many of your future careers, therefore I hope you find value in familiarizing yourself with it while collecting your data. You are to collect commodity market price information for the following (5) Commodity categories: Grains, Livestock, Softs, Energies, and Metals. I would like you to select (3) products from each of the afore mentioned categories, as well (6) months worth of pricing information for each product selected. You may notice that the months displayed are not always "consecutive", that is okay as long as you have (6) months. In your spreadsheet note the month specific to the data being shared. You will see price information such as "open" "high" "low" etc, however it is the 'Last' noted price you should use in your spreadsheet. In the pricing information you will see something like 916^6S or 916P, disregard the ^6S and P, you will use only the 916 portion of the number. Lastly, in your spreadsheet I want you to note the time stamp for when the 'Last' price was reported. If you have the website open long enough, it will reload periodically updating the price and time stamp information, these sites are typically TRULY live sites. On a new sheet within the same workbook where you collect your raw data, I would like you to create a pivot table using the raw data you collect (data requirements outlined above). In your pivot table fields your "Rows" should have 'Category' and 'Product' isolated, your "Values" should have 'Last Price' isolated, and your "Columns" should have 'Month' isolated. I would like you to have a functional slicer inserted for 'Product' and I want you to turn field headers off. This may be where you need to re-watch the video! The site I find most user friendly for commodity market data is: https://www.agweb.com/markets/futures/ (Links to an external site.) If you prefer a different website you can certainly use it. Feel free to play around on these websites, many of them have embedded reporting and analytic capabilities, you will NOT break anything so just start clicking. https://youtu.be/dIs9Tq6XwMw