User Proficiency

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I am doing a project for school on the average Microsoft Excel user's
knowledge in Excel. If you have could please post what you think the average
persons knowledge of excel is from zero to 100, 100 being an expert, I would
be incredibly happy. Also, if you have an links with statistics on this
subject please let me know as well.
 
The average user's knowledge of Excel would be about average.
--
Jim Cone
San Francisco, USA
http://www.realezsites.com/bus/primitivesoftware
(Excel Add-ins / Excel Programming)



"Oshtruck user"
wrote in message
I am doing a project for school on the average Microsoft Excel user's
knowledge in Excel. If you have could please post what you think the average
persons knowledge of excel is from zero to 100, 100 being an expert, I would
be incredibly happy. Also, if you have an links with statistics on this
subject please let me know as well.
 
Hmmm,

Potentially a very interesting question. I only have a couple of mundane
musings to kick things off ...

1. With reference to Jim Cone's reply: if the scale of 0 to 100 is linear
then the average Excel user's knowledge will be below 50, I suspect quite
substantially.

2. At work we were asked to self-rate ourselves in a variety of programs,
and there were a large number of individuals who believed themselves to be
Advanced or Expert, the vast majority of whom do not even have a rudimentary
knowledge of macros. I suspect some people write a couple of formulas that
are marginally more complex than "=A1+B1" and somehow believe they are well
down the road to mastery of Excel. This self-rating may not be entirely
unreasonable if they do not have any conception of what is possible with
Excel. (This was somewhat frustrating as these were supposed to be the
"go-to" people in times of need, but since a lot of people come to me with
their Excel questions and I then come running here for help ...) However ...

3. I play bridge of Bridge Base Online (BBO). There are 6 levels of
self-rating, the second highest of which is "Expert". There are a remarkable
number of individuals online who consider themselves "Expert". I am lucky
enough to personally know a few bridge experts (and play face to face bridge
with them), and feel qualified to judge that many of the online Experts
barely qualify as "Intermediate", let alone "Advanced" or "Expert". With some
of them it may be that they are the "Expert" at the local club, but their
horizons are limited and they genuinely have no idea what a real expert
"looks" like. But others are clearly delusional and have no self-knowledge as
to their own inadequacies. (BTW: I rate myself as "Advanced" on BBO and now
cringe when I remember that I self-rated myself as "Advanced" 3 years ago
when I was clearly still an improving "Intermediate".

This is largely tangential to the original question but I hope there will be
some further interesting discussion on (and around) the original question.

Cheers,

Matt
 
Thanks for the Great Comment veryeavy!!

veryeavy said:
Hmmm,

Potentially a very interesting question. I only have a couple of mundane
musings to kick things off ...

1. With reference to Jim Cone's reply: if the scale of 0 to 100 is linear
then the average Excel user's knowledge will be below 50, I suspect quite
substantially.

2. At work we were asked to self-rate ourselves in a variety of programs,
and there were a large number of individuals who believed themselves to be
Advanced or Expert, the vast majority of whom do not even have a rudimentary
knowledge of macros. I suspect some people write a couple of formulas that
are marginally more complex than "=A1+B1" and somehow believe they are well
down the road to mastery of Excel. This self-rating may not be entirely
unreasonable if they do not have any conception of what is possible with
Excel. (This was somewhat frustrating as these were supposed to be the
"go-to" people in times of need, but since a lot of people come to me with
their Excel questions and I then come running here for help ...) However ...

3. I play bridge of Bridge Base Online (BBO). There are 6 levels of
self-rating, the second highest of which is "Expert". There are a remarkable
number of individuals online who consider themselves "Expert". I am lucky
enough to personally know a few bridge experts (and play face to face bridge
with them), and feel qualified to judge that many of the online Experts
barely qualify as "Intermediate", let alone "Advanced" or "Expert". With some
of them it may be that they are the "Expert" at the local club, but their
horizons are limited and they genuinely have no idea what a real expert
"looks" like. But others are clearly delusional and have no self-knowledge as
to their own inadequacies. (BTW: I rate myself as "Advanced" on BBO and now
cringe when I remember that I self-rated myself as "Advanced" 3 years ago
when I was clearly still an improving "Intermediate".

This is largely tangential to the original question but I hope there will be
some further interesting discussion on (and around) the original question.

Cheers,

Matt
Click to expand...
 
You'd need to clarify who you consider a "user" and what parts of Excel
they'd need to know. I don't know of anybody who knows everything about
Excel. But, If you mean people who have used Excel regularly as part of
their accounting/finance job for a year or more, I have quite a bit of
experience working with those people.

My typical ratings would fall into these categories:
BEGINNER
0 -10 : Knows basic Windows navigation, uses the formula wizard, adds
2 cells using =SUM(A1,B1)
11-20 : Can change fonts, shading, and borders. Uses basic functions
competently (SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, etc)
21-30 : Uses AutoFilter and VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, IF
INTERMEDIATE
31-40 : Uses Data Grouping/Outlining, and Pivot Tables, SUBTOTAL,
and uses Data Validation
41-50 : Uses Advanced Filter, SEARCH, FIND, SUMPRODUCT, combines
INDEX and MATCH, and uses Conditional Formatting
51-60 : Records basic macros for simple tasks.
ADVANCED
61-70 : Edits recorded macros to improve efficiency of simple tasks
71-80 : Builds functional, but inelegant, vba driven models.
81-90 : Builds complex, but still somewhat inelegant, models.
91-100: Builds fully featured, secured, well structured and
documented models.

Using the above, I would categorize the Excel users I deal with this way:
5% are Beginner (11-20)
45% are Beginner (21-30)
40% are Intermediate (31-40)
5% are Intermediate (41-50)
5% are Intermediate (51-60)

Some dabble in the Advanced (61-70) area, but not in any ways
that I'd recommend using.

Those are my non-scientific observations. I hope that helps.
--------------------------

Regards,

Ron (XL2003, Win XP)
Microsoft MVP (Excel)
 
One company I knew had an Excel timesheet for the contractors.

Contractors had to enter their hours in the following custom "template" that
was submitted to HR.

A B C D E F
----------------------------
M h h . m m
T h h . m m
W h h . m m
T h h . m m
F h h . m m

Then you use a calculator to add up the hours at the end of the week.
 
I think you need to isolate exactly what you mean by "knowledge in
Excel", too. I can think of two scenarios where you'll run into
rating difficulty.

One, Ron C's response - macros come after complex worksheet
functions. What if the user is an expert C++ developer, with some
knowledge of Visual Basic? Of course you can have the kinda scenarios
with that stereotype. This user will avoid anything overly
complicated with the interface, worksheet function, etc. and stick to
familiar programming techniques to build the features from scratch,
however elegantly. This is knowledge of application development, not
an Excel skill per se.

Two, Tim's response. The users in the scenario do not grasp the
concept of a computerized spreadsheet, period. To them it's like a
word processor or a form designer. They're like the people who didn't
see any sense in having xerox machines because they already had carbon
paper. Things that any spreadsheet can do - starting with VisiCalc -
may very well be outside of their frame of reference. Excel shares
many fundamental spreadsheet capabilities with other software, and
knowledge of it is somewhat different from knowledge of the specific
unique features and quirks that Excel has to offer.

Which brings me to my last point. There are so many aspects to Excel
specifically, that it seems almost impossible to rate. At my work, no
one comes close to me using any Office application, particularly
Excel. However, on a regular basis, I see a neophyte user doing
something that I just never thought possible. I remember how, years
ago, these were ways I discovered everything from Freeze Panes and
Autofilter to PivotTables. These users may not be able to make the
most out of these features as an expert might, but they have
discovered them whereas some advanced users have not. Does this
constitute knowledge and bump you points?

Sorry if I'm getting too philosophical on you. I think average is
about 42.
 
Well, of course it depends how you choose to distribute the numbers between
0 and 100, but given an appropriate choice of numbers, the average will be
50.

What your project will hopefully find out is that, just as most Excel
questions on this group, the problem is not finding the answer, but finding
the detail of the question.
 
just as most Excel questions on this group, the problem is not finding the
answer, but finding the detail of the question.
Click to expand...

Ain't that the truth!

Sometimes, trying to interpret the question is an exercise in futility!
 
Thanks for all the information. I Learned a lot from what all of you posted;
I hope some of you may have learned something as well.
 
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