Warren Buffett, Inflation, and Excel
On May 3, 2021, CNBC quoted Warren Buffett saying, “We are seeing very substantial inflation. We are raising prices. People are raising prices to...
Find Leading Indicators Using Automated Cross Correlations in Excel, Part 2
In Part 1 of this discussion about automated cross correlations, I explained how to set up the cross-correlation Data Table shown below, in columns...
Chart of the New Economic Index that Tracks GDP Weekly
In April 2020, the Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED) added a measure that will be followed closely during the Covid-19 economic devastation and recovery....
Interactive Dashboard Magic with Excel Slicers
The figure below illustrates an Excel magic trick I created for an Excel Dashboard, using in Excel 2016.
The key trick is the method I...
Show Useful Year-to-Date Variance Charts in Your Excel Dashboards
Many companies have a difficult time creating charts of spending variances. In fact, many companies rely on charts that are nearly useless for that...
Should You Raise Prices? Should You Lower Them? These Excel Charts Can Help You...
In the early 1980s I was the CFO of a company owned by a man whose first instinct was to cut prices.
When business was...
Dashboard-Like Excel Charts of International Consumer Confidence
The following Excel figure displays its charts in a dashboard-like format. At least, it's in a format that dashboards should use!
When you use simple...
Map Costs and Sales in Excel with a Classic Breakeven Chart
When I worked as a CFO, my monthly reports always included a breakeven chart. It was one of the most popular reports I produced.
But...
Compare Metrics by Category Using Excel Dot Plot Charts
Management reports often must compare measures of performance by some type of category.
For example, reports could compare sales by product, variance by department, sales...
An Introduction to Excel’s Normal Distribution Functions
(Download the workbook.)
When a visitor asked me how to generate a random number from a Normal distribution she set me to thinking about doing statistics...
Latest Articles
Getting Radical with Excel
It's time to think about Excel in a radical new way—when we use it to work with business or economic data.
It's time, in fact,...
How Fast Is Too Fast?
(Originally published in Inc Magazine.)
What typically tops the list of worries of the chief executive officers of fast growing companies? Financing that growth, according...
How to Smooth Data by Using the TREND Function
Years ago, I read that Prof. William S. Cleveland had suggested that data could be smoothed by calculating a centered trendline through adjacent data—a...
Advertisement