Pivot Tables: Are they helpful?
Starting off, the pivot table allows you to move big datasets within a table. Not changing the actual data sets, you can use them again while also adding more data. Making it very convenient!
Use-Cases
Pivot tables help analyze sales, such as which product sells the most in a particular city or on a specific date, or they can help identify patterns. Perhaps people prefer to purchase certain items before the holidays; I've included an example of what they could look like above. This can even help places save money! By comparing stats, they can see whether or not selling a product is worth it, or if a store placed in a certain city is making enough profit to stay open. The Units show the amount of stock that is still available in the store itself or in the warehouse, making it aware if more should be ordered or not. Making these kinds of things more organized helps people understand the information much better.
Other cases...
- Academic Grading
- Social Media
- Library Tracking
- Personal things (tracking anything what you eat with details like calories and etc)
I really appreciate how you structured your entry around the question, “Are pivot tables useful?” and how you clearly demonstrated how they are useful by explaining what they are useful for. The part about reusing the same data without having to change the original data is very significant, and you communicated it clearly. “The one question I had reading this is: Which of these use cases do you think is best suited for pivot tables—business, academic, or personal tracking? ‘I’m interested in hearing which one you think they’re best at demonstrating.’” One thing I would like to see is if you could elaborate a little bit more about one of your "Other Cases" by perhaps giving a quick example of how the rows and columns might work for something such as social media or numerical grades. Another thing I would like to throw into the mix is the fact that pivot tables can also help solve equity or access issues. Take the example of grading students on a scale of academics, and these tables can help understand the performance of students across split-parallel or split-same sections and semesters. This helps to provide an altogether different perspective and functionality.
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