How I use AI for data analysis

AI could be a powerful tool for helping you be more effective with everyday work tasks. In this episode of Ore’s Gist, I want to show you 3 ways I have used AI like ChatGPT or Google Bard to help with work tasks. The tasks I have used them for are:

1. Getting a simple explanation of how to do something in Microsoft Excel.
2. Qualifying and summarizing information.
3. Generating sample data.

Let’s go through each of these one by one.

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A simple explanation of how to do something in Microsoft Excel.

Sometimes, I may need something explained in simple english so that I can understand and use the concept or formula effectively in Microsoft Excel. Here’s an example of a prompt to explain an “IF Statement” in Microsoft Excel.

Prompt:

Can you explain an IF statement in excel in simple language?

Result:

Here’s what ChatGPT brought back as a response:

Of course! In simple terms, an IF statement in Excel is like making a decision in a spreadsheet. It helps Excel decide what to show in a cell based on a condition you set.

Imagine you have a box (a cell) in Excel, and you want to put either a red ball or a blue ball in it. You tell Excel, "If it's sunny outside, put a red ball in the box. If it's cloudy, put a blue ball in the box."

In this example:

"If it's sunny outside" is the condition or question you're asking Excel.

"Put a red ball in the box" is what Excel should do if it's sunny (the true part).

"Put a blue ball in the box" is what Excel should do if it's not sunny (the false part).

So, in Excel, you write an IF statement like this:

=IF(Sunny, Red Ball, Blue Ball)

If the condition (Sunny) is true, Excel will put a red ball in the box; otherwise, it will put a blue ball.

In real-world Excel use, instead of balls, you might use numbers, text, or formulas, and your condition could be anything you want to check, like whether a number is greater than another number or if a word appears in a cell. Excel helps you make these decisions automatically using IF statements, making your spreadsheets smarter and more useful.        

Qualifying and Summarizing Information

When I have information in a table but need to summarize this information into fewer categories in order to make sense of the data, I sometimes use AI to help me categorise the data. Look at this example below.

Prompt:

I have results from a survey about how people heard about my company. The responses were free text. Can you create a structured table with the responses as well as a column for categories that each response could be grouped into? The data is below.        

Here is what ChatGPT brought back as a result:

I could further summarize the information above by asking it to give me the number of people for each category.

Prompt:

Can you create a summary structured table with the different categories of responses and how many respondents for each category?        

Generating Sample Data

When I want to create a tutorial showing how to do something on Excel, but I don't want to use company data for data protection reasons, I can use generative AI to help generate the data that I need.

Here is an example of a chat I had with ChatGPT about generating sales data for me to work with.

User: Can you generate a structured table with sales data?

ChatGPT: Certainly! I can help you create a structured table for sales data. Please provide me with some sample sales data, including the columns you'd like to include in the table (e.g., Date, Product, Quantity Sold, Revenue, etc.), and I'll generate a structured table for you.

User: please come up with the sample data yourself

ChatGPT: Certainly, here's a sample structured table with some fictional sales data:        

Here were the results:

Things to note

Prompt Character Limit

There is a limit to the number of characters you include in your prompt that the AI would be able to process. So you may not be able to include thousands of rows of data. If the amount of information in your prompt is too long, it should let you know.

Give details when creating prompts

When working with generative AI, the more details you can give it, the better the results you get. By being specific you increase the chances of getting the responses that you require. For example, you would get better results with this prompt:

Generate a structured table the following columns: Tenant name, property key, Balance, Arrears / Prepaid. Include 5 rows of  sample data.        

Result:

than this prompt:

can you create a structured table with tenant information?        

Result:

Don’t put in confidential information

The data you put into Google Bard or ChatGPT is not necessarily confidential. Humans are often used to check inputs in order to help improve the system, so be careful about including company data.

Accessing these AI tools

Here are the links to the AI tools mentioned in this article, so you can try they out for yourself:

• GoogleBard - bard.google.com
• Open AI’s Chat GPT - chat.openai.com

Let me know if this was helpful to you. Do you have a prompts you use often with ChatGPT? Share them in the comments section.

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About the author

Hi ??, I'm Ore Apampa. I am an entrepreneur and voiceover artist based in the UK but I do love to travel so I'm not always there. I share stories about my experience being a voiceover artist whilst doing a PhD. I'm hoping sharing the things I learn on my journey will help other people on their journeys.

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