People who know how to use a spreadsheet or  Excel have one important skill to start building a professional path as a Data Analyst. Excel as SpreadSheet are a really powerful tools for data research but, where data analysis is in excel or Google SpreadSheet? For this answer we have to dive deeper on the math concept world: Notation. 

Notation is a common language used to communicate mathematical ideas. Think of notation as a universal language used by academic and industry professionals to convey mathematical ideas. 

You likely already know some notation. Plus, minus, multiply, division, and equal signs all have mathematical symbols that you are likely familiar with. Each of these symbols replaces an idea for how numbers interact with one another and have the following properties:

• Understanding how to correctly use notation makes you seem really smart. Knowing how to read and write in notation is like learning a new language. A language that is used to convey ideas associated with mathematics.

• It allows you to read documentation, and implement an idea to your own problem. Notation is used to convey how problems are solved all the time. One really popular mathematical algorithm that is used to solve some of the world's most difficult problems is known as Gradient Boosting. If you really want to understand how this algorithm works, you need to be able to read and understand notation.

So, Hightly recommend to understand notation before learning Excel languages, and for sure Excel Languages are based on notation and has been in development for a very long time, and it supports a surprising amount of languages on its own as you can see: 

Excel Formula Language: While we don't think about it this way, excel formulas are a language.

Excel 4.0 Macro Language: Yes, it still works. Software companies don't remove old features due to backwards compatibility.

VBA: This is the language that Excel records your macros in. But its much more powerful than that. (There is a reason you will get a warning when a workbook contains macros! VBA can be used for much more than dialog boxes.)

M Language: This is the one the came in Excel 2016, under Get & Transform. It is used the language for data transformation. (You can look up “M is For Data Monkey” for a start.)