Nonprofit debt and the decision to donate

April 9, 2010

During most of the go-go 2000s I lived in the epicenter of the housing boom, Sarasota, FL, where we know a thing or two about debt (and nonprofit debt). So I wasn’t at all surprised to read this morning’s New York Times article about the Harlem School of the Arts, which over the course of [...]

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Pivot table webinar now on Youtube

April 4, 2010

The introduction to pivot tables I gave as part of O’Reilly’s webinar series recently is now up on Youtube. Enjoy!

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Pivot table webinar slides online

March 25, 2010

Thanks again to everyone who joined yesterday for my pivot table webinar hosted by O’Reilly. Here are the slides, which include web links, and here is the data. Stay on the lookout for a video of the presentation itself, which should be up soon. (These slides correct my description of tabular data, which I’d called [...]

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When to use Excel, when to use R?

January 26, 2010

Because I wrote a book on data analysis and am currently finishing a book on Excel and a introductory video series on R for O’Reilly (I’ll tweet the link when I have one), I get asked this question pretty frequently. Generally the person asking this question knows enough Excel to get by and has never [...]

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Structured references and tables in Excel

January 15, 2010
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How to use Excel to compare two versions of a legal contract

December 3, 2009

I had a chance to use Excel for this purpose and thought you might want to see the technique. Be sure to watch it on full screen HD.

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How to write a fundraising letter and evaluate its performance

December 1, 2009

Now is the season when nonprofits are scrambling to get out their end of year fundraising letters. Nonprofits who sent out letters over a week ago have been forgotten, since everyone reboots their brains over Thanksgiving, and nonprofits who send out letters after next week are running the risk of being outflanked by competitors. I’ve [...]

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A Head First chapter goes from nothing to something

November 12, 2009

I just bought some new screencasting software and decided to let it run while I did a first-pass layout on Head First Excel chapter 4. A first-pass layout, at least in my workflow, is when I take a chapter that has been planned out in storyboards and put the elements I’ve written into InDesign. In [...]

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What kind of modeler are you?

September 17, 2009

Here’s a cool interview with Paul Krugman on the occasion of his receiving the Nobel. The interviewer asks, Interviewer: What makes a good modeler in economics? Paul Krugman: There are many different ways. One of the things you learn — and I think this is true for the physical sciences as well — is that [...]

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How to learn a new language… the weird way

September 15, 2009

The highly literate mute When I was in graduate school, a friend of mine earned some extra cash as an English tutor for students from Southeast Asia. As he was sizing up his students’ knowledge of English, he noticed something funny. Their reading and listening comprehension was exquisite: on these fronts they were at a [...]

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