Now we know what our area of interest is, let us declare the objectives of this

manuscript. This text was written with only one objective in mind: To teach the
reader how to use the basic predictive analytics modelling methods by using
primarily the standard Microsoft Excel spreadsheet tools. Some deviations from this
objective were exercised where the effort to use the standard tools was not
commensurate with the value we get out of it. In this case, some specialized
packages were used.

All the predictive analytics models introduced here are supported at a very
practical level through Excel spreadsheets. Complicated macros, VBA statements, or
even proprietary functions, are avoided. However, some of the topics are either
very complex, or the basic Excel tools become very complex to implement. In such
cases, we reverted to one of the commercially available tools, and the other that
is classed as freeware. The first one is NumXL add-in and the second one
CurveExpert software.