Working With Excel
I retrieved data from Microsoft CoPilot for my data table. I asked AI to give me a table with a list of the U.S. Senators, their party affiliation, their state, their age, and whether or not they speak Spanish. Microsoft CoPilot left out 8 senators from the list, so I worked with 92. As a Spanish major, I was intrigued as to how the language plays a role in the leaders of our country, so I used various Excel functions I learned throughout the semester to answer some questions I was interested in.
Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft, 16 Dec. 2025, https://copilot.microsoft.com.
Above is the first half of the table I used from Microsoft CoPilot, with its headings included.
As shown above, I used the filter function to see the names of those who responded “yes” to being a Spanish speaker.
As shown above, this is the list of names I was given from the formula on the left of who is a Spanish speaker.
On the left is a screenshot of a Pivot Table I created. I wanted to see which party had the most Spanish speakers. I chose a Pivot Table so it would break down the numbers for me and show me which party the Spanish speakers and non-speakers belonged to.
For my next Excel function, I wanted to see if it was more likely that the younger or older Senators speak Spanish. Above are the 2 equations I used in order to get the average age of those who said no (top left) and those who said yes (top right). As you can see directly to the left, the average age of those who said yes is significantly younger than that of those who said no. This would suggest that younger Senators are more likely to know Spanish compared to their older colleagues.
As shown above, I used the filter function to see which states the Senators that spoke Spanish belonged to.
As shown above, this is the list of the states where their Senators speak Spanish. I was interested in seeing if there was any geographical correlation, but as you can see from the findings, Spanish-speaking senators belong to many different states in many different regions of the country.