This assignment provides you an opportunity to utilize the functions and tools of Excel to solve a basic analytics scenario: data validation.  The purpose of this assignment is to use Excel to quickly identify the possible errors within the database, and not to visually examine all 6,000+ database records.

The HR tab in Hospital.xlsx  downloadfile contains the employee records downloaded from the Human Resource database of a fictitious hospital. As with any acquired data, you must be aware of the limitations of your dataset.

The sourcing database for Hospital.xlsx has a limit of twenty (20) characters for the Address 1 and Address 2 fields.  Therefore, truncated addresses are not considered errors. The only errors in the Address fields that can be easily identified in Excel would be a missing address or an address of insufficient length to contain a deliverable address. Six characters is the minimum length for an address (e.g. “1 U St”.)

To accurately identify the possible errors in the Address 1 field, through Excel, you would need to create a parsing algorithm to correctly determine the components of an address including the primary address number, pre-directional, street name, suffix, post-directional, secondary address identifier, and secondary address.  Compound this with the Address 1 truncation issue and the creation of such an algorithm would be way too advanced for this course.  Therefore, there are NO Address 1 fields errors except a missing address or an address of insufficient length to contain a deliverable address.

Data is required in all fields except Address 2 and Phone. If a phone number is entered it must adhere to the 999-999-9999 format.  No rules concerning cases exist for any field.

Both five-digit zip codes and zip+4 zip codes are allowed in the Postal Code field.  Also, remember that a zip code may have more than one authorized city or spelling. Only one US zip code in Arizona (85142) crosses county lines.

On the Errors tab in Hospital.xlsx  downloadfile, document each error by identifying the location of the error (ID Number), the type of error (omission, range, data entry, etc.), the correct information if known, and the formula used to identify the error.  You receive 1/2 point for each error record identified; i.e. even if a record contains more than one error, you receive only 1/2 point for that record. At least 100 data error records exist in this file.  Extra credit is available.

Fifty percent of the score for this assignment is using Excel functionality correctly, e.g.. using functions such as LEN, TRIM, CONCATENATE, IF and Boolean logic, and lookup, match and index logic.  A well done assignment is a combination of finding a large number of erroneous records and doing it using Excel logic as opposed to manually identifying erroneous records.

An additional file name Zipcode.xlsx  downloadis available as a reference.

Remember, use Excel to sort and filter the database. Also, use the lookup and reference; text; and logical functions to complete this assignment. If you do not explain how the error was identified, you do not get credit for the error.