A Pivot Table is a tool in Excel that allows you to summarize your data in a simple chart. It is a tool that summarizes and reorganizes the columns and rows in your Excel spreadsheet so that you can create a desired report, and also performs aggregate functions ( in other words, performs a calculation on a set of values, and returns a single value), in order to help you understand your data.
The "Pivot" refers to the data being turned in a way to view it from a different perspective. The benefits of Pivot Tables are that it allows you to manage a large amount of data that you would be difficult and time consuming to analyze by hand. Pivot Tables help to identify sums, averages, ranges, and outliers. It can bring your attention to various trends and issues.
As a student studying in the GTA, you have access to extensive training material through lynda.com. You can access it here. As of July 2019, this resource is available through Linkedin Learning. For more information on getting access to Toronto Public Library, visit their site.
Enter "pivot tables" in the search box:
This will bring you to a list of various training videos containing information about pivot tables. We highly recommend the Excel PivotTables for beginners by David Ludwig, as it contains most of the information that you need to know for your assignment. We will be modelling much of our session after this training video.
Here are some resources that will help you to further understand Pivot Tables:
Excel Tutorials created by The BRIDGE
Below is also a YouTube video by Excel Campus that can also help get you started.