Excel Data Analysis For Dummies or Inside the C Object Model

Excel Data Analysis For Dummies

Author: Stephen L Nelson CPA MBA MS

So here’s a funny deal: You know how to use Excel. You know how to create simple workbooks. And how to print stuff. And you can even, with just a little bit of fiddling, create cool-looking charts. But sometimes you wish that you could do more with Excel, such as how to use Excel to really gain insights into information, the data, that you work with in your job.

Using Excel for this kind of stuff is what Excel Data Analysis For Dummies is all about. This is a book that assumes that you want to use Excel to learn new stuff, discover new secrets, and gain new insights into the information you’re already working with in Excel.

Ready to take Excel to the next level? This plain-English guide covers all of these concepts, and more, to ensure that you’re using Excel to its fullest capacity:

• Harnessing information in lists

• Querying external databases and Web pages tables

• Cleaning data with text functions

• Building and working with PivotTables

• Customizing PivotCharts

• Using the statistics functions

• Understanding Optimization Modeling

If all this talk of statistics and advanced tools makes you light-headed, don’t worry. Excel Data Analysis For Dummies distills the most important fundamentals into everyday language. You’ll find just enough information to help you get your work done – without leaving you gasping for air in a sea of technobabble. It’d be a real shame if you didn’t at least know what bells and whistles Excel has to offer and the basic stepsthat you need to use them.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction	1
Pt. I	Where's the Beef?	7
Ch. 1	Introducing Excel Lists	9
Ch. 2	Grabbing Data from External Sources	31
Ch. 3	Scrub-a-Dub-Dub: Cleaning Data	55
Pt. II	PivotTables and PivotCharts	77
Ch. 4	Working with PivotTables	79
Ch. 5	Building PivotTable Formulas	105
Ch. 6	Working with PivotCharts	125
Ch. 7	Customizing PivotCharts	145
Pt. III	Advanced Tools	166
Ch. 8	Using the Database Functions	167
Ch. 9	Using the Statistics Functions	187
Ch. 10	Descriptive Statistics	229
Ch. 11	Inferential Statistics	249
Ch. 12	Optimization Modeling with Solver	271
Pt. IV	The Part of Tens	293
Ch. 13	Almost Ten Things You Ought to Know about Statistics	295
Ch. 14	Almost Ten Tips for Presenting List Results and Analyzing Data	305
Ch. 15	Ten Tips for Visually Analyzing and Presenting Data	311
Pt. V	Appendix	323
	App.: Glossary of Data Analysis and Excel Terms	325
	Index	335

Interesting textbook: Uma Armação para Vender Gestão

Inside the C++ Object Model

Author: Stanley B Lippman

Inside the C++ Object Model focuses on the underlying mechanisms that support object-oriented programming within C++: constructor semantics, temporary generation, support for encapsulation, inheritance and "the virtuals" - virtual functions and virtual inheritance. This book shows how your understanding the underlying implementation models can help you code more efficiently and with greater confidence. Lippman dispells the misinformation and myths about the overhead and complexity associated with C++, while pointing out areas in which costs and trade-offs, sometimes hidden, do exist. He then explains how the various implementation models arose, points out areas where they are likely to evolve, and why they are what they are. He covers the semantic implications of the C++ object model and how that model affects you programs.

Davide Marcato, Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books - Davide Marcato

Understanding The True Semantics of C++

Stanley Lippman is a very popular name in the C++ community, in particular because the author of this book has also written the bestselling C++ Primer (now in its third edition), which I consider one of the best companions to Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language, and because of his activity as the editor of the well-respected C++ Report magazine.

In this text, Stanley analyzes the language from a very different perspective compared to his other excellent book: The reader is supposed to possess a good working knowledge of C++ and have some real practical experience in his/her curriculum before approaching the first page. From this level s/he is taken to real mastery of the semantics of the complexities of the language, which reserves a lot of surprises and hidden dangers to even the most skilled engineers. Almost all of the fundamental building blocks are dissected, put in a historical perspective, and explained with precision in a surprisingly easy-to-follow way.

I am convinced that much of the clarity evident even in the most intrinsically complicated passages is due to the author's choice of giving very little for granted prior to starting a thorough discussion around a tough point. This manual will surely be of little help to a neophyte, but just as surely one needs not belong to a panel of experts to benefit from its observations, because the level of complexity never gets too deep without having spent some pages of prior accessible contextual information to get everyone up to speed.

Inside the C++ Object Model is aimed at those developers who routinely use C++ but feel the discomfort of not really knowing the underlying weight of many common operations they perform or constructs they peruse. A particularly fit subset of these programmers is made up of the hardcore plumbers who pay their bills writing C++-based programming tools and libraries, or those who assume the uneasy role of the "official code optimizer" in a medium-to-large development team. Each of these programmers are going to immensely appreciate the intensive coverage of the object-oriented features offered by the language, their run-time overhead (in terms of execution time and binary size), and their influence in compilation times. This knowledge constitutes a major aid when it comes time to decide whether a certain language feature fits your needs without breaking your requirements. Moreover, along the way the text is sprinkled with interesting anecdotes explaining why certain common myths regarding C++ are nothing more than unfounded rants.

The topics and comparisons filling up the chapters are always concrete and never exceedingly academic. For example, the old C-style data manipulation is compared side-by-side with the modern encapsulation methodologies promoted by OOP, which involves inline accessors and mutators. Another chapter deals with the tricky semantics of construction and destruction, dedicating a fair amount of room to the exact circumstances that trigger the execution of constructors, destructors, copy constructors, and conversion operators. This leads to the treatment of the delicate topic of the automatic creation of temporary variables by the compiler.

Moving on, of particular interest to me are the sections focusing on the cost of virtual functions (to achieve polymorphism) compared to static-bound methods, as well as the section discussing various facets of multiple inheritance.

There are very few aspects of this book that do not deserve praise. One of them, by far the least important, is the design, which I would have preferred to be more dynamic, thereby simplifying the jumps from one point to another (which makes sense considering the typology of the contents).

The real drawback of Inside The C++ Object Model is that it is dated. Most of what Stanley says still holds true and is informative, but the language has evolved a lot since its 1996 incarnation, when the manuscript was first sent to the printers. Consequently, many of the newer features, despite their undoubted load of semantic insights and potential misconceptions, are not even touched. Namespaces are entirely forgotten, and even such crucial relatively recent elements like exceptions, templates and run-time type information receive far less coverage than they deserve. Now that the ANSI/ISO C++ committee has agreed on a final standard, I really hope Lippman will decide to take the time to update and expand his already admirable work.