Tag Archives: shoptalk show

Dear Analyst #86: One Important Excel Feature to Know to Do Your Best Data Analysis

Nothing like a click-baity headline to get your spreadsheet emotion all riled up amirite? Earlier in my data analysis career, I thought knowing advanced Excel formulas and writing macros made you a good analyst. If you’ve been following this podcast/newsletter, you’ve probably discovered that there is no one magic Excel feature that automatically makes you […]

Dear Analyst #74: Quick hack to count the number of words in a cell with LEN and SUBSTITUTE

While this little Excel/Google Sheets trick is a pretty straightforward hack, it led me to think about how we use our tools, how we stretch the capabilities of our tools, and think outside the box to come to arrive at a solution. Seems like a lot for a formula trick on counting the number of […]

Dear Analyst #49: DCF spreadsheet error leads to $400M difference in Tesla acquisition

I’ve been posting quite a few episodes about spreadsheet errors as of late. The two Harvard professors and their faulty economic policies, the JPMorgan whale trader, and the EuSpRIG community who tries to catch all these errors. This is a quick story about how Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity in 2016 was botched due to a […]