However, if you have never used Excel, be prepared for some extra effort to keep up. Go through this before the first class and keep it handy for reference. There are two other recurring topics in which prior knowledge would help. This will be helpful when we discuss using regression, curve fitting, and forecasting. In many discussions, you must understand the concepts of expected value, variance, confidence intervals, and probability.
Finance is the functional field used to illustrate many of the spreadsheet modeling applications.
Therefore, it is recommended that you take Finance either before this course or simultaneously. This has not been made a prerequisite. However, you will get more from this course if you have had Finance. I anticipate that there will be a significant variation in the Excel skill levels of the class members. If you have relatively little experience with Excel, you are advised to do some additional work to get up to speed.