October 19, 2020 AI

Visually Explained: Three Excel Core-Features Even Excel-Pros Don’t Know

Over the last few years, Excel has been redesigned from the ground up. Currently, Microsoft is making the new Excel core-features available to every user, regardless of your Office 365 license. Thanks to the Microsoft naming conventions, it is easy to confuse the new features with existing ones. That being said, Power Query and Power Pivot are not the same things as Pivot Tables, which you have likely been using for years. Power Query (M-Language)Data preparation is very time-consuming. Power […]

September 29, 2020 Beginner, Business Analytics, Excel, Statistics Leave a comment

10 Statistical Functions in Excel every Analytics Professional Should Know

Overview Microsoft Excel is an excellent tool for learning and executing statistical functions Here are 12 statistical functions in Excel that you should master for a successful analytics career Let’s Excel in Statistics! “Statistics is the grammar of Science.” – Karl Pearson Let’s make that a bit more relevant for us – Statistics is the grammar of “Data” Science. You’ll notice that almost every successful data science professional or analytics professional has a solid understanding of statistics – but […]

September 25, 2020 Analytics

Career Transition Towards Data Science: Planning a Learning Sabbatical

At the time of writing this post, I am nine months into my learning sabbatical. You can read about my journey here: “Career Transition Towards Data Analytics & Science”. Today I will share with you how you can plan your own, unique learning sabbatical, regardless of its scope and duration – anywhere between 1 and 12 months. Let’s get started. Begin with the end in mind If you have ever read Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” you […]

September 25, 2020 Analytics

Why Excel Users Should Learn Python

Latest update: November 16, 2018 Microsoft Excel has been around for over 30 years now, and chances are it’s not going to change in the foreseeable future. In fact, Excel is facing immense competition from challengers such as Google Spreadsheets and well-funded start-ups like Airtable, which are both going after Excel’s massive user base of approximately 500 million worldwide. Tech-savvy small and mid-sized businesses embrace innovative alternatives to Excel. However, making a dent in the large enterprise space is a […]

September 25, 2020 Analytics

Should Python Become Your Official Corporate Language, Along With English?

English is becoming the official language in the global business world, being currently spoken by approximately 1.75 billion people worldwide according to Harvard Business Review. While English is the fastest spreading language in human history, a significant proportion of businesses are still resistant to giving up on their native language. Just try having a casual conversation in English with German employees at their corporate headquarters canteen (I am German, just for the record). However, pressures are piling up, not only […]

September 25, 2020 Analytics

Mental Framework For A Data Driven Digital Transformation

Over the last years, my small business has undergone a digital transformation from a marketing service company to a data literacy consultancy. What does a data literacy consultancy do? We teach business users within large enterprises to work with data, and we help them acquire the necessary skills from state of the art Excel to Python, querying structured, semi-structured and unstructured databases, as well as math, statistics, and probability. Throughout our transition, we applied a set of techniques, principles, and […]

September 25, 2020 Analytics

Why I Am Writing At Data Science Central, And Why You Should, Too

My writing engagement at Data Science Central came up unexpectedly. Back in August 2018, I stumbled upon an excellent write-up on Data Science Central. The author, Bill Vorhies, shared his thoughts on career transitioning toward data science. I wrote him an email, complimenting him on his blog post, and I dropped a few lines about my own transition. Here’s his response: “Congratulations on your remarkable journey. Perhaps you’d like to write one or more articles around this theme as we […]

September 25, 2020 Analytics

Your Company Needs A Spreadsheet Policy More Than Ever

Electronic spreadsheets have been around for nearly 40 years now. They were invented by Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin, founders of VisiCalc, and I had a chance to chat with both gentlemen a couple of months ago. I highly recommend watching this TED talk with Dan Bricklin: It’s important to understand for which purpose electronic spreadsheets were built in the first place if we want to anticipate what their future might look like. In response to my question in how […]