If I have one pet peeve about newspapers, it’s how they represent data. So let’s do a pop quiz. Which graph in the image below shows the worse looking trend? The truth is, they are three representations of the same trend. Graph A is the most realistic. The Y-axis scale goes from 0 to 480 [...]
[Note: new data added under Updates section below.] I’ve decided to share some Excel user survey data in hopes that others find it useful. Trying to find data for the market share of the various versions of Microsoft Office products is hard. Microsoft doesn’t publish it, and the only references I find online are typically [...]
Neil Davidson has an interesting post questioning the logic of trimming the fat in economic downturns. His isn’t the first blog post I’ve seen recently on the applicability of Lean to software development. As someone with an Industrial / Manufacturing Engineering background who now does programming, I bristle when I see production line concepts applied [...]
Version 2.2 of FlowBreeze Flowcharting add-in for Excel has been released. It has several new features and many minor usability improvements. Two of the features have come from customer requests – a Style Wizard, and Insert Branch tool. The Style Wizard (shown below) lets you quickly apply formatting to an existing flowchart. You can make [...]
Working Backwards Lately I keep running into instances where different worlds coincide with a common theme. The theme I’m running into lately is flipping the funnel. Sometimes when you hit a stumbling block, it helps to flip the funnel and work the problem backwards. For example, consider these three topics: 1. Improving e-commerce sales. 2. [...]