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Welcome back to the podcast!
This week’s edition…
“Excel hates me! When 2 + 2 isn’t always 4″
You know, one of the most frustrating (and often the most fascinating) part of using Microsoft Excel has to be just how helpful it tries to be.
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Probably one of the most baffling things I see today has to be messages sent via Twitter, SMS, or IM. Thanks to people even lazier than myself, there is now an entire generation of people who can confuse even the most skilled Native American code talkers of World War II.
It’s absolutely amazing how being limited to 140 or 160 characters can really change our spelling and sentence structure. For instance, if I wanted to invite my friend out for drinks at the House of Blues in Cleveland, Ohio, I might send a text message like, “U Wan2 meet up @ HOB L8R?” WOW! This reminds me of a game I used to play as a kid on road trips where I would try to figure out what someone’s license plate might mean if it were a sentence or phrase. (more…)
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Charts are everywhere in daily life; from news commentary, to stocks, to web polls, right down to entertaining sites like www.graphjam.com.
Who really knows which one to use? We all understand the old phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” but which picture (or, in this case, which chart) gets me closer to that thousand instead of 3?
Today we are going to cover some basic chart types and what picture they draw. So, like Prometheus giving fire back to man, I now give the knowledge of Redmond back to the masses.
The four most commonly used chart types are Column, Bar, Line, and Pie. These are not the only chart types, but they cover what most mere mortals like you and I can probably get the most out of. (more…)
“Ben / Met Anna / Made a hit / Neglected beard / Ben-Anna split / Burma-Shave”
What, you may ask, do charts have to do with some now defunct shaving cream?
When I was younger (much younger), a great era was just coming to a close. From 1925 until 1963 the Burma Vita company installed a series of small billboards along a roadside spaced for sequential reading by passing motorists, almost always ending with the name of their flagship product Burma-Shave. Over the years, more than 600 unique slogans were developed, but they were always delivered in the same format. (more…)
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Organizing the layout of your data is critical when attempting to do analysis.
Acquiring the best data set possible can be a very elusive agent. When it comes to finding out what is needed to select the best assets, identify problems, or just to view the results of a campaign, I look at it from the approach of an intelligence agency.
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Often my wife, co-workers, and friends say that I have a really strange way of thinking and it is extremely difficult to follow the logic on the train wreck of thoughts running through my head. In fact, the most common expression I hear from people tends to be, “How did you get that when we started out with this?” To which I reply, “Do you really want to know how I started at A, then went to Z, then back to Y, on to 3 through 12, and finish on B and C?” Inevitably, after they ask the first time, they usually don’t ask again.
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Every winter, I tell myself I am going to buy one of those remote car starters — you know, those things where I can stay toasty warm in the confines of my own home while de-icing my car. But then summer comes, there is no more need, and I forget.
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Who’s who isn’t just a book; it is a life saver… no not those little delicious tropical flavored pieces of inspiration…
This is a link to information and class schedule mention in VOL003 Podcast
Working with Dates and Times in Excel
Enjoy!
Do you need to know how many days are between two dates? If you have to figure out how long before a payment is due, how long it takes to manufacture a product, how many days shipping took, or how long before a perishable product is out of date then this tip will help you.
Before you begin type in this data to a new spreadsheet: