I'm in the process of preparing to teach
an introductory course on data science using the R programming language.
My audience is undergraduate students majoring in business subjects.
A typical business undergrad does not have any computer programming experience,
but has taken a few classes which use Excel.

Personally, I am very comfortable with R (or other programming languages)
because I majored in computer science.
However, I have the feeling that many of my students
will feel wary of learning a programming language
because it may seem difficult to them.

I do have some familiarity with Excel,
and it is my belief that while Excel can be useful for simple data science,
it is necessary for students to learn
a serious programming language for data science (e.g., R or Python).
How do I convince myself and the students
that Excel is insufficient
for a serious business student studying data science,
and that it is necessary for them to learn some programming?