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Open Thread: How are you using Excel?
Merlin Mann | Aug 22 2006
Yesterday, I mentioned I'd been talking with someone who's looking at interesting things people are doing with Microsoft Excel. I talked to her again yesterday, and with her official okey-dokey, I'll virtually introduce Tralee Pearce (*waves*), a reporter from Toronto's Globe & Mail whom you might remember from a very swell article about the Hipster PDA. So, by request -- and to help Tralee with fleshing out her fun-sounding article -- I hope you all will jump in here: What kind of cool, novel, and non-obvious stuff are you doing with Excel? What's the wildest, most obsessive, most nerdy thing you ever saw someone do with our favorite spreadsheet program? 119 Comments
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 This geek is an environmental...Submitted by doinkman (not verified) on August 22, 2006 - 6:06pm.
This geek is an environmental engineer and I use Excel A LOT! One example was to create a 20-year life cycle analysis of cogeneration systems at wastewater plant. You entered any manor of economic and scientific design criteri; interest / inflation rates, capital costs, utility costs, labor costs, equip efficiencies, heat available, and on and on. From there I could chart different alternatives and concepts against one another over a 20-year time period. Took maybe 40 hrs from scratch, which is pretty incredible considering I've used in several other projects since. The most complicated sheet I've ever saw was a Activated Sludge Model that simulates a biological system, in various reactors based on different scenarios. I also used it to geekily plan my wedding / recttion including: mail merge, resort comparsion, tracked wedding reception responses, and now I have a sheet with what everybody gave so we know what to give back. » POSTED IN:
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