Had a sick day…now unable to sleep after sleeping too much. At least I don’t feel too sick anymore. So I decided to try and get rid of some of my 38 open tabs in Chrome on my laptop (my phone has 100+, so that will take a while). While cleaning up I came across a really good collection of tips for using Excel (in Dutch). Dutch isn’t a language for you? You know what Google translate is, right?
https://financieel-management.nl/artikel/10-excel-wetten-dashboard-maken-excel
Wish I had read these before starting my internship, especially the tip about standardizing your excel model’s structure. I had already begun to recognize the need of this myself and was trying something like:
- Data Input (raw/manual data)
- Data Transform
- Analyze
But I think in a lot of situations the suggested standardized tabs make more sense:
- Input (raw/manual data)
- Calculate
- Variables
- Output (Analyze)
Thought: Why is stuff like this often not being taught in Universities/College? As businesses become increasingly data-driven (unless they are interested in becoming bankrupt), there should be way more focus on professional use of Excel. It is easiest to understand for average users and can be learned most quickly (vs. SQL and other non-GUI oriented solutions).
Some music: