Doing things the wrong way is different from being just plain wrong. Here, I describe having been wrong in my analysis and someone was issued a check for $5000 more than they were due. The good news is that the problem was caught, decisions were made, and everyone survived. Being wrong is part of the […]
Today Alex Powers at ItsNotAboutTheCell posted a comment that reminded me that: 1. We all started using Excel all the wrong ways. 2. The Excel community is great about sharing knowledge and helping others not have to work so hard. Here, I share a story about the olden days and doing things the hard way. […]
#SSSVED is Vlog Every Day in April, inspired by Amy Schimttauer at SavvySexySocial. https://www.youtube.com/user/savvysexysocial This vlog takes you into my Excel work style and environment: the things that you won’t learn in a workshop but the kinds of things that we each feel are essential to be in place when we sit down to whoop […]
A friend offers you ghost peppers and uses a chart to prove that the ghost pepper isn’t as hot as a poblano pepper, check the vertical axis on the graph. It might be logarithmic scale. My blog: http://datascopic.net/blog2-2 Guerrilla Data Analysis 2nd Edition http://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Analysis-Using-Microsoft-Excel/dp/1615470336 Sound fx from: http://www.freesfx.co.uk/
Event planners are fascinating. Talking with them is invigorating because everything they do is about data: guests, food, client budget, beer & wine, seating, table rental, time, fees … A good event planner has a handle on all that data. In this video I show a data model/template that I’ve been developing in Excel, based […]
Download the sample file here: http://datascopic.net/Cmodel A commissions plan can be more complex than straight multiplication. This video, and this is an example of what it means to build a “model.” Modeling involves taking someone’s intentions and interpreting those intentions in Excel so that the right thing happens. The thought process and layout are often […]
Over at Reddit /r/excel LSatyreD asked about converting a massive grid of ingredients into their corresponding recipes. In this video, I show how to do this without writing code! In Excel 2016, Get & Transform and a pivot table will get the desired result. (In Excel 2010 and 2013, Power Query is the old name […]
Lots of people are thrown into the deep end with data. They are the unwitting analysts. This video tells the tale of someone who works at a nonprofit. In this case, data wasn’t his job. He just jumped in, took control and uncovered a key bit of insight. He started with a report that suggested […]
We want to know if last week’s product usage was unusual compared to overall average usage. This video shows how to set those alerts and use formula triggers to prevent calculations when the necessary data is incomplete. Functions used are: ABS – for calculating absolute value COUNTA – for counting the non-empty cells in a […]