Ateneo Math holds Excel Workshop, a perspective

As part of the Theory of Interest (MATH 101.6) course of the junior math majors and in preparation for the succeeding financial mathematics courses, the Ateneo Department of Mathematics held its Excel Workshop session entitled “MATH 101.6 Excel Workshop: How to be a Freak in the Sheets” last 19 October 2024. This workshop aims to strengthen the students’ skills in using excel as various computations involving finance-related concepts heavily rely on the use of this software. Whether the math majors wanted to know more about how excel works, to be more prepared for the MATH 101.6 group project, or to simply spend time with their friends, this workshop was surely suited for them.

Prior to the workshop, he provided the working file so that everyone could work along while he teaches. The file included various exercises which were answered during the session. The workshop was conducted via a hybrid setup in order to accommodate the students residing far from the campus, including myself, since it was held on a weekend. Facilitated by Gelo Nery (5 M AMF), the workshop included topics on essential etiquette on using Excel, alongside the necessary formulas and shortcuts in various financial computations. One of my blockmates (3 BS AMF) even expressed how it was pretty interesting for her to learn the industry standard of how to use the software.

Some musings about the workshop

Allow me to share three biggest takeaways I received during the workshop. He began by suggesting not to use the upper leftmost cell (A1) and instead make the first column a margin so that the working sheet is neater. As a person who wants a presentable working file, I resonate with him as well. I would usually begin with the second column when creating tables so that all outer borders will be seen. 

The next point he tackled was something I only discovered during the workshop. He also proposed an alternative to merging cells when we want to place a text at the center of certain cells, because all columns will be selected once we highlight from the merged cell. To remedy this, the center across selection is used so that only a particular column is highlighted. As someone who frequently uses the merge function, this is definitely a new insight for me (my blockmates definitely know this as I would send them working files (e.g., sign-up sheets, class compilation of MATH 90.1 (Advanced Calculus) and MATH 62.1 (Introduction to Statistical Theory) solutions using Google Sheets).

The final input from Gelo that I want to highlight is the functions used to determine a certain date or the number of days in between two dates. I found this really helpful especially in our final long test in MATH 101.6 where we had to compute the purchase price of a bond during a date in between payment periods. Instead of going through the nitty-gritty manual counting of days using the number of days per month, the DAYS function of Excel and Google Sheets minimized the burden for us.

What really made the session feel light was the facilitator himself, Gelo, a graduate student who once underwent the journey of an AMF major, which was something that Samantha Say (3 BS AMF), my blockmate, also appreciated about the session. According to her, the session felt casual and it was also interesting how Dr. Jeric Briones, the program adviser of the AMF program, would pitch in from time to time and provide input as well. This was extremely efficient as the workshop was conducted via a hybrid setup, wherein Dr. Briones was the one monitoring the Zoom call if there are questions being asked from the online participants.

Outlook

Overall, I feel that having a crash course on the use of Excel is greatly helpful especially for those who heavily rely on the use of spreadsheets. Jiro Tanyag (3 BS AMF), my blockmate, shared with me how the workshop has provided a good foundation to build upon for further learning of Excel, since a lot of the careers we aim for as math majors demand high proficiency in the said software. Especially for AMF juniors who are about to take a series of courses on financial mathematics, the workshop made us well-equipped with the fundamental skills in Excel. Although the two hours is definitely not enough to cover everything that Excel has to offer due to its numerous functions, the workshop was a good starting point to explore more about Excel which other spreadsheets like Google Sheets do not have.