In Introducing Excel Formula Helper Chandoo is taking on the Microsoft Office Help system. It’s still pretty small, with about 50 commonly used formulas. It uses plain English to describe the purpose and syntax of the function, and gives a couple usage examples for each.

Chandoo makes the list twice today (wait until he gets my [...]

The inaugural edition of the Excel Dashboard and Visualization Boot Camp finished a short while ago. Mike Alexander and I entertained a crowd of over 30 brave souls who braved the onslaught of charting and VBA and Excel and PowerPoint and Access. I’m still in Dallas until my flight leaves at 7 am Saturday morning. [...]

Some items worthy of note . . .

It’s mostly photography, not data visualization, but it’s still pretty cool.
Internet cartoon XKCD captures my views on fancy ringtones. Yes, I’m a Luddite too; my phone rings the old-fashioned way.
Speaking of Waterfalls, here are some nice wallpapers for your desktop: Waterfalls, Most Beautiful Waterfalls, and Waterfalls.
I’ve been [...]

Fewer links today, in fact, fewer posts all week. It’s been rather busy. . . .

Microsoft wants you to Give Us Feedback for Microsoft Office 2007. No, really. (Thanks for the link, Echo.)

Sept. 12, 1958: Kilby Chips In, Integrates Circuit (Wired Magazine). I didn’t see this link in time to include it with my last [...]

A promise kept
Utah children live their father’s dream of seeing Red Sox play at Fenway
Just when you think the world is full of cynicism and evil politicians, you come across a story like this. Sometimes people can rise to the occasion.

 
Robert Kosara of EagerEyes looks at variations of Square Pie Charts in Engaging Readers [...]

Francisco of XL Cubed announces the development of an Excel Chart Tamer utility. This utility will be an alternative charting interface, which will offer chart types and formats designed for easy creation of effective charts. A public beta is expected in October. I’m looking forward to it.

John of cellmatrix.net explains Two-Way Variance Analysis in Post [...]

Links I have found interesting and worthwhile
Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel [Part 2 of 4] - Adding One Click Sort. This is part two of a four-part guest series by Robert on Chandoo’s Pointy-Haired Dilbert blog. This part of the series shows an elegant way to allow sorting by a user selected column in [...]

Once in a while I’ll post a handful of useful links. Here are some I’ve come across recently that I found interesting or useful, or which have led to discussion on this and other blogs.
My Places on File Dialogs - Save a lot of time during the day by adding frequently accessed folders to the [...]