Stewart and Meme: the pups

Here they are ... getting very big. In the last two weeks they have doubled in size again! Stewart in particular has a voracious appetite.

We did a spot of gardening today and after we had put the sand and soil in these old tyre pots, you can see what happened. I hope you can appreciate how big they pups are too. I have included a photo where they are next to my leg to give you a reference point.

DW

Does Anyone Understand?

I have been saying this for a long time ... I think people click ads on Google with no idea that they just clicked an ad that automatically sends money to Google.

By the same token, I have never seen an ad on Facebook but if I found that I had inadvertently sent money to Facebook I would be horrified.

Let anyone start a business but let them do it honestly.

Read this article to see why I said all of that:

Google showcase comes at a premium - http://www.ft.com/cms/8c1f2e90-5501-11e3-86bc-00144feabdc0.html

DW

Two Dogs and a Cat

The Dogs

We got back home early this evening and all is well with the family.

We were really keen to see the pups as I had been away for about two weeks. Last time I was away for 9 - 10 days and by the time I got back they had doubled in size. Well, they did it again: they doubled in size again and Stewart is big and heavy whereas Meme is just big.

We held them for a while to check them over and both of them jumped to the floor and both of them did the same flop landing as their front legs could not coordinate with the rest of their bodies.

The Cat!

Kitty, aka meow meow, paid a call too and made a lot of noise. This is odd behaviour for her as she normally never bothers us. We gave her some milk, two lots in fact. She stayed with us for quite a while and if we moved she made more noise. Then suddenly she launched herself at one of our pot plants and ended up on top of it, breaking off its growing point in the process. I think it was trying to catch an insect!! Anyway, we put her out after that. Let's see her mood tomorrow.

DW

Beta: how to find one!

Another course completed and another post for the blog just suggests itself naturally.

This week a delegate wanted to know how to find the weighted average cost of capital for his company: not just an academic view but a real WACC value. One of the aspects of WACC that is often a bit tricky is to find the value of Beta. It's easy to find Beta values for listed companies in the UK, Europe and the USA but this company is in Saudi Arabia and I could not find the Beta value on the Saudi stock exchange web site.

What I did was to go and find a sample of the changes in the index of the entire stick exchange and the changes in the price of the share. I found the information I needed at bloomberg.com and here is the table I prepared in the Excel file:



 

All we need to do then is to create this formula: =SLOPE(C5:C12,B5:B12) ... in cell E16 and the estimate of Beta this gives is 0.8314 ... with a market Beta of 1, this tells us that Savola is rather a conservative company as far as the Saudi stock market is concerned.

If I have time over the next week I will try to expand this table to 70 prices and changes to give us a more reliable estimate of Savola's Beta.

Watch this space!

Duncan Williamson

Tea at The Ritz

We just had afternoon tea at The Ritz and it was very good. Highly recommended. We didn't take any cameras with us so a photo of their advertising card is the best I can offer!

The harp music was very subdued but i think that was right.

Four afternoon teas served while we were there.

DW

Butterfly Park and the Damp Walk Back

We took a taxi to the KL butterfly park this afternoon and then enjoyed walking around and taking photos of the little things. For some reason I didn't fully grasp, we ended up walking away from the park. Then our attempts at flagging down a taxi failed. Then it started raining. Then we walked all the way back to the hotel where a long hot shower awaited!

So here I am, post shower, feeling comfortable and ready for dinner somewhere!

Butterfly photos later!

DW

I Wonder Why!

We have just spent two hours in the Platinum shopping centre in Bangkok and in one part of the mall there is a clothes shop called Galashiels. I happen to know that Galashiels is a small town on the borders of England and Scotland and if only my Thai were much better I would have asked how they ended up with a shop with that name. Fascinating! For references, here is a link to that Scottish town, population just over 12,000: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galashiels Please note, this is not criticism of anyone or anything, just wondering aloud. DW

Moresby, Mali and Melbourne

I am in transit in Dubai and I have just been chatting to a Kiwi who works in a gold mine in Mali. I said, there’s a bit of strife over there at the moment isn’t there? In the North, yes, but not where he and his 149 expat colleagues are helping to mine gold and silver.

He started his expat life in Papua New Guinea but was baled out by the New Guinean army when the locals cut up rough over a pay claim and drove machinery and vehicles over cliff edges … you can imagine.

He is on his way to Melbourne now, a fourteen hour flight. His route is as follows:

• Mali to Paris
• Paris to Dubai
• Dubai to Melbourne

Two and a half days to get home. He has just left to find a bed for the night as he has a 9 hour wait for his next flight!

Good luck as we shook hands in farewell!

DW

Password Possibly Poleaxing

This has happened before but I can't remember when.

For some reason many of the services I use online are refusing to recognise my passwords. I then go through the process of resetting the dratted things but I cannot guarantee that I won't have to reset it again very soon afterwards.

Frustrating waste of time.

DW

Pivot Table COUNT Default Problem CURED!

I had a delegate this week whose Pivot Tables would take any of his numerical data and by default count them rather than sum them. When he asked me why that happened I went through the normal explanation of data v numbers ... which is true. However, in his case there seemed to be no reason behind this phenomenon: his data was clean as he was using my files and no one else had the same problem. He was using a good quality company laptop too.

We both checked on the internet last night and gained nothing from the many discussions on this problem: most of which related to data v numbers I have to say.

This morning I suggested that we look at his Windows Regional etc settings. His default language etc was US English and that seemed to be in order; but I said, let's try this, change it to UK English and see what happens.

Ta daa! For some reason, this change did the trick and now this delegate's Pivot Tables sum his data rather than counting it.

Another success story fromExcelMaster!

Duncan Williamson

Weak in Riyadh

The title's a pun!

Just finished my working week in Riyadh and will be travelling back home in about four hours from now.

DW

Reverse Pivot Magic

UPDATE: 13th September 2019 I can imagine some of my visitors will still find this page of use if they are using a very old version of Excel. However, if you are using Excel 2016 or 2013 or even 2010, you should be able to use a much newer and more powerful technique for unpivoting data. Of course, I already have a page for that and here it is: Power Query Unpivoting

UPDATE: 16th January 2014: I have been using this technique since I last reported and I have found some limitations AND solutions to this reverse pivot technique. I will prepare a page and video to demonstrate what I have found.

2nd December 2013

Watch the video and then imagine that you have downloaded a five year set of financial statements for a company. Nothing wrong with the data or the database they came from but imagine you want to set up a pivot table from them. Probably not possible unless you are lucky enough to have a data provider who has designed their output with this in mind.

Let's cut a long story short: open this file amazon_case_reverse_pivot and try to apply the reverse pivot technique in my video to the data you will see there. Good luck and it will be worth any effort you put into it! PLEASE READ THE NOTES in this work book re copyright ...

I didn't invent this technique but I learned it a couple of weeks ago and used it in earnest just now ... watch the video!

I had a table that had months across the top, years down the left hand side and data in between. What I wanted was the data in a list in three columns:

year month value

transposing, rotating, copying and pasting can give you what you want but it will take a long time. My original table covered all twelve months and five years ...

Reversing a Pivot table is what it's called and this is how to do it:

1. Press Alt + D then P to call up the pivot table wizard and select Create a "Multiple Consolidation Ranges PivotTable."


2. Select "I will create my own page fields".


3. Select your data range and choose 0 page fields


4. When you see your pivot table, double click on the intersection of Row Grand and Column Grand, in the bottom right hand corner of your pivot table


5. You will be presented with your new table in the form of a list ... that is, from pivot table style to list style ... it's magic!

The video [wpvideo tGsBeRej]

Duncan Williamson

AGGREGATE Function Templates

I know I learned this function a while ago but then I forgot about it. The aggregate function was newly created for Excel 2010 and it provides us with some interesting functionality: overcoming shortfalls in the performance of such functions as AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, LARGE, SMALL and a few more ... 19 of them altogether. The trouble is, good as it is, it is not that simple to apply. What I have done then is  to create templates that will help you to use the aggregate function in one or both of the formats in which it might be used.

From the Excel Help File:

Returns an aggregate in a list or database. The AGGREGATE function can apply different aggregate functions to a list or database with the option to ignore hidden rows and error values.

Syntax

Reference form

AGGREGATE(function_num, options, ref1, [ref2], …)

Array form

AGGREGATE(function_num, options, array, [k])

The AGGREGATE function syntax has the following arguments (argument:

Function Number

Required. A number from 1 to 19 that specifies which function to use

Options

Required. A numerical value that determines which values to ignore in the evaluation range for the function

Ref 1

Required. The first numeric argument for functions that take multiple numeric arguments for which you want the aggregate value

Ref 2

Optional. Numeric arguments 2 to 253 for which you want the aggregate value

For functions that take an array, ref1 is an array, an array formula, or a reference to a range of cells for which you want the aggregate value. Ref2 is a second argument that is required for certain functions. The following functions require a ref2 argument:

• LARGE(array,k)


• SMALL(array,k)


• PERCENTILE.INC(array,k)


• QUARTILE.INC(array,quart)


• PERCENTILE.EXC(array,k)


• QUARTILE.EXC(array,quart)

The AGGREGATE function is designed for columns of data, or vertical ranges. It is not designed for rows of data, or horizontal ranges. For example, when you subtotal a horizontal range using option 1, such as AGGREGATE(1, 1, ref1), hiding a column does not affect the aggregate sum value. But, hiding a row in vertical range does affect the aggregate.

My templates will tell you if you are trying to use the wrong format of aggregate and has then been set up to ensure you don't make any other mistakes when using it. This includes providing combobox guidance for choosing which functions and options you need to use.

The Excel file is available here: aggregate_function ... just click!

All feedback is warmly received as are suggestions for improvement.

Duncan Williamson

Wildcards are Great ... Until THIS Happens!

Wildcards

As I am working away this week, I can be found looking at, opening up, working on a spreadsheet or two. Last night I came across yet another excuse to build an Excel data set. I found the TopTrack 250 and just had to have it: all seven years' worth of day for the top 250 companies according to the Top Track definition. Look here for the 2013 data set.

So I duly copied and pasted the data for 2013 into a spreadsheet and edited it. Having seen that I liked what I had done I then copied over the other six years' worth of data from Top Track. Because the data copied over in a very standard and predictable way, I was able to select all six sheets of the additional data and work on them all concurrently: moving data from one row to another, setting up columns in a better way, lining up the data to make it consistent with what I had already done with the 2013 set. Easy and not too time consuming.

But now the wildcards. On the web site that the data came from they had symbols such as asterisks that pointed to a note that said ... average, estimate ... or something like that. I needed to get rid of them all! As it was late and I wasn't looking carefully, I carried out an edit and replace of * and having pressed Replace All, found that ALL of my data disappeared ... it was doing what a wildcard must do ... in this case, any character was being replaced by nothing! A very hasty Ctrl+Z put everything back to the way it was but I still had to get rid of these symbols.

What to do? Delete every symbol manually? No, there were too many of them. Given that the symbol was in the same place in the cell it was in, at the beginning, I ended up with a formula solution that I entered in a new blank column that I would eventually use to replace the current data:

=IF(LEFT(D6,1)="*",RIGHT(D6,LEN(D6)-1),D6)

Why D6? That's where the first of my data points is in each of the tables I set up. I then copied the formula across to the next cell on the right and then down to the bottom of the table ... it worked a treat.

I remembered that I should have added that there were other symbols in the data in addition to the * and I amended my formula to cope with the ‡ symbol:

=IF(OR(LEFT(D6,1)="*",LEFT(D6,1)="‡"),RIGHT(D6,LEN(D6)-1),D6)

Now I had to copy and paste my edited values as text rather than leaving them in formula format, otherwise I have to leave the original data in the file AND have the edited version. So I just copied and pasted the edited values over the original data and my data were now clean and tidy ... but read on!

Numbers as Text

One problem remained: having replaced these symbols, the result was numbers as text rather than number as number. In this case I did this:

• enter 1 in any available cell


• copy that cell


• select the entire range of numbers ... all of them so you miss nothing and don't waste your time selecting just the affected ones if your data set is large like mine


• paste special, multiply


• ta daa! your numbers as text have now become numbers as numbers


• Delete that cell with 1 in it

There you are wildcards and paste special to set up a nice, clean table of data copied from the web.

Duncan Williamson

Oor Wullie

Willie Robertson, Oor Wullie for four hours.

Willie made himself known to me at Bangkok International Airport as we were just two of three people in the Emirates lounge. He said, Its just you and me now. I looked up from my spreadsheet and suggested we start a riot then. He felt a riot was not the answer.

After confirming that it would be fine for us to chat for a while, we got to talking about life, the universe and everything. We are of very similar ages and I gathered from very similar backgrounds: his Dundee upbringing v my West Yorkshire upbringing. The common bond, of course, was my Scottish mother.

I don't normally chat to fellow travellers because they invariably think I want to hear about their aeroplane and airport stories. Thanks, everyone; but you can keep them to yourself.

We spent about four hours together, chewing the cud, putting the world to rights, making pots of green tea and eating desserts. Willie had a couple of glasses of white wine.

He started by telling me that he does competency training in the Oil & Gas industry. I said, I've got a spreadsheet for that!! I have too!

Willie mentioned the book he wrote: On the Milk ... available on Amazon. I checked as we chatted. If I can find a way of getting the book to me I will buy it. It's Willie's story of adolescence in Dundee, involving a milk cart. I asked if he meant horse and cart and as he started to object by saying he was not so old, I said we had a horse and cart milkman well into the 1960s!

He came to reveal his authorship as I vented bile against backpacking gap year people with their dreadful clothes, bad manners and bad habits. I also said white people with dreadlocks looked stupid. He replied by pointing at his own barnet suggesting his dreadlocks weren't too bad. I said there's a difference between your slightly long hair and dreadlocks. Then he said he had grown his hair long in an attempt to look more like an author. Well, that's one way of telling me about his book.

Speaking of colour, later in the evening he told me that Baa Baa Black Sheep has become Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep. I said, you're joking ... Well, I will be baa baa black sheeping all over twitter for a while now. Who are these morons who think they've done something clever. Here's the truth: black sheep really exist, rainbow sheep don't. When I was growing up and raising my own children, baa baa black sheep NEVER conjured up images of racial turmoil. These people are sick.

I told Willie the story of the £80,000 Urinal v Non Urinal sign changes on the toilets in Manchester University. How these things ever get beyond zero is the most mysterious thing.

Then again, what about MARY and her little lamb with its fleece as WHITE as snow? I need a lie down now that I have thought of that. Somebody DO something.

After watching me make my pot of tea he asked if I ever had a drink so I said no and explained why: waking up too early with a thick head had lost its appeal!! Fair enough he said, as he took another swig of his WHITE wine. I then explained how some people try to force me into having a drink ... you can't celebrate with lemonade ... ok, if really want to buy me a beer, feel free ... but I won't drink it. That led to an evening of teasing over the champagne I was missing out on.

I started talking about Andrew Mitchell and William Hague. How they became an MP and then treat it as a vehicle for doing many other things rather than concentrating on representing their constituents. Willie said that whilst he didn't like this Mitchell chap, he had been treated shabbily. I said fair enough but it was clear that he had taken his bike to the wrong gate and had argued with the policemen about it. Normal people wouldn't have argued. Moreover, why did he resign so quickly? Still, he should worry.

At various stages Willie said he would change his shirt before boarding his plane. He never got round to it until a minute before i left for my flight. As I was packing up, he returned, sporting a more normal shirt than his tee shirt. Standards!

For some reason I mentioned the Newsnight programme I watched while I was in London two weeks ago. The one in which Jeremy Paxman was sent to interview Russell Brand. What we got was a rant: why are there poor people, we need to do something about poverty, there is illness in the world and that's wrong ... that's what I heard. I thought, who thought that getting someone with the views of a sixteen year old on Newsnight would be informative and useful in any way? I thought at one stage Brand was going to come out with that Monty Python classic: narcosyndicalist but he didn't. Then I imagined Brand going back to his multi million pound home and lifestyle and stopped worrying about that irksome man.

As we meandered through our views on life, Willie mentioned his time in Romania and how he ended up buying two friendly policemen there a tot of whisky each a two in the morning. Which sparked my own memory of the beautiful (untouched) girls of Bucharest and of the Ceaucescu monstrous building that I walked the circumference of but which I never considered stepping inside of. Along the same lines, when someone suggested in Georgia that we take a detour to go to Gori and sit on the bed that Stalin was born in, I said, drive on!

I was was impressed by the revelation that Willie has £2,000 in £2 coins in a sock under the bed.

A propos nothing I told Willie that I met a British couple one weekend at a resort on Lake Malawi. We chatted about this and that then one of them said, you know, we drove to Zomba and back the other day and we didn't see one WHITE face. Rather odd that, don't you think?!!! How do we let these people out?

So called reality TV got a mauling from Willie. Who are these 19 year olds, Willie wanted to know, who end up on our television screens whilst caterwauling that all they want to do is sing and if they don't win this competition, life is over for them. How about getting a life and working their way around the clubs and theatres like normal people? Of course, most of them warble rather than sing anyway! I added that Willie must never forget that erstwhile cooks on TV cookery competitions all tell us how PASSIONATE they are about food. Then just about all of them start murdering their ingredients and recipes. I really wouldn't want to eat what most of them throw together, would you?

Let me finish with this. Willie talked about his efforts to find someone in the Dundee government machinery who could help and advise him with his work ... like me, he works abroad so he exports his services. He got nowhere, no names of commercial attaches anywhere. I pointed out that William Hague has reformed passport renewal for the UK. If you find yourself abroad with the need to renew your passport, you will find that it will take six WEEKS. That's the death of my business for six weeks then. Stupid, stupid man, Mr Hague.

Well, there you are: the perturbations of two grumpy old men in an airport lounge in Bangkok. Entertaining!

Thank you Oor Willie, I would not have done any of that without you!!

DW

Travelling

Leaving home today for this trip:

Bangkok
Riyadh via Dubai
Bangkok
Kuala Lumpur
Bangkok
Home

There you are!

DW

Here it is but you can't have it

Of late I hace come across this Windows shocker.

Open Windows Explorer and search for something. On average, if it's on your hdd, Windows will find it. However, I have had occasions when I have known something was there but I had to refine the search to get at it.

Sometimes,  twice yesterday, this happens ... enter your search term and wait. Windows shows you one or more files so you click one to open it and it says, I kid you not, Windows cannot find that file ... Explain that!

Another Windows Explorer niggle comes when I want to refine my search ab initio by, eg, saying, only find xlsx or pptx files ... usually such a choice is not available to me. Then sometimes it is ... not very often, though.

DW

Tabs? Where are my tabs? I want my taaaaaaabs

Eeessh! Calm down!

So, you know your work book compriees at least two work sheets but you cannot see any tabs at the bottom of your Excel work book.

Click on maximise in the top right hand corner, just in case. If you still cannot see them, try this

Click the office button at the top left, it's either a Windows circle or a rectangle saying File
Click options
Click advanced
Scroll to Display options ...
Select Show sheet tabs if it is not selected
That should solve this problem.

This happened to me yesterday with an old file and since I NEVER deselect show tabs, I just wonder how these things happen!

Duncan Williamson

Rejected ... they didn't like my cake ; (

I signed up to an online photo storage/selling site and so far I have uploaded a few photos and they have been accepted. I had one rejected last week because it contained the name of an hotel, fair enough.

Now, make your own mind up: why do you think this photo was rejected today? I have no idea!

Well, I'd show you the photo if I could but Blogger won't let me upload it for some reason. I'll find a work around soon!

DW

Washing Machine