A/B testing (sometimes called split testing) is comparing two versions of a web page, email newsletter, or some other digital content to see which one performs better. A company will compare two web pages by showing the two variants (let’s call them A and B) to similar visitors at the same time. Typically, the company […]
The Situation: Kakes+, a Pennsylvania company that makes terribly unhealthy small pies/cakes, believes that their machines are overfilling their blueberry pies. Kakes+ wants to test this statistically, and has recruited you to come up with a data-backed answer. The pies should weigh 8 ounces each. Step 1: Collect Data You need to weigh the pies […]
Tables are one of the most important features of Excel, but are often overlooked. Tables and keeping analyses in Excel connected, will drastically increase your efficiency in Excel. Let’s start by understanding how they work with PivotTables. We’re going to use an R Dataset called DoctorContacts. Download the .csv file using this link (and save […]
Grouping in PivotTables is a way of combining data to perform analyses without having to use functions. You can group numeric columns to turn them into categories, you can group date columns by date ranges to get even intervals, and you can group text columns to put together similar values. We’ll go through all three […]
Most people don’t know that bubble plots even exist in Excel. In this blog post, we’ll walk through how to take advantage of these very effective charts! They are great for comparing three quantitative variables at once. For a nice intro to bubble plots, check out Hans Rosling’s very famous Ted Talk. If you don’t […]
Joins in SQL Joins are one of the most important (if not THE most important) concepts in SQL. If you take the time to solidly understand how joins work, you’ll be in an excellent place for writing queries. We also have an in-depth article about performing multiple joins. So, let’s dive in! Join Definitions Joining […]
Multiple joins are one of the toughest SQL concepts – in this post we’ll decode them and review some common pitfalls. One of the best ways to learn is with an example. If you’d like to follow along, you can download this zip file that contains the three tables as .csv files here, and import […]
A list of freely available data on the web. The first list is sites we think are the best for accessing quality datasets. Below that are additional sources by category. Best Sources Kaggle By far our personal favorite! There are dozens if not hundreds of quality datasets available here. ICPSR You have to create an account, […]
Formatting charts in Excel is no easy task. It’s time-consuming, and Excel is pretty fussy which doesn’t make things easier. In this post I’ll give general tips for formatting charts, and also go over a few common scenarios. Understand the Parts of a Chart First thing’s first: it’s important to get the syntax down pat […]
Excel gives you a lot of flexibility when creating files and starting projects, and we’re often asked what the “best” solution is for keeping things organized. This post will review what we recommend. As with everything in life, there may be a few exceptions where you’ll want to set up your file differently. However, this […]