Publications by George Mount
What data analysts should know about open source
For a long time, many data analysts worked firmly ensconsed in the Microsoft stack — definitely Excel, maybe some Access, PowerPoint or VBA serving as the automative glue. If it wasn’t Microsoft, it was some other proprietary toolkit from IBM or Oracle, paid off-the-shelf software, and so forth.These days? We have the godfather of Excel Bill ...
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Here’s how R and Python think differently about data
I’m a big believer that data analysts will derive far more value from their tools when they understand the underlying philosophy and worldview of those tools.For example, the way that open source code is created and maintained gives it distinct advantages and disadvantages over proprietary software. And if analysts can understand the difference...
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Anscombe’s quartet in Python
Anscombe’s quartet is a well-known statistical parlor trick with a powerful message. Fortunately, with the help of the seaborn package as well as pandas, it can be demonstrated in Python with just a few lines of code, which you can follow along with below:Moral of the storyWhat I love about Anscombe’s quartet is how it shows data visualizatio...
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Advancing into Analytics: Foundations of Marketing Analytics
Everything you need to get started with marketing analyticsAbout this eventFree signed copy of Advancing into AnalyticsWorkshop recordingDemo notes and handoutsIf you’re a marketing analyst looking to level up your data analysis skills, this is the workshop and book for you. After attending this class, you’ll be in great shape to explore adv...
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Advancing into Analytics: Foundations of Finance Analytics
About this eventConduct rigorous data analysis that is easy to reproduce and share with colleaguesCreate beautiful visualizations that aren’t available in basic Excel and Power BICollaborate more effectively with engineers, developers, data scientists and other technical professionalsSignal to employers that you can work with a variety of progr...
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Python for Excel Users Crash Course (Data Science Dojo online presentation)
I’ll be giving a free, online presentation in partnership with Data Science Dojo entitled “Python for Excel Users Crash Course,” Weds 3/9 at 3pm Eastern.Register now for this free online event.It will also be available to watch at the scheduled time on Data Science Dojo’s YouTube channel.You can download the preliminary slides and dataset...
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Consider learning Python: MyExcelOnline Podcast Top Excel Tips of 2021
John Michaloudis reserves an annual edition of his MyExcelOnline podcast to a roundup of the top Excel tips and tricks of the year from community leaders. I was happy to again be invited to participate in this podcast.This year, I chose more of a general piece of advice than specific Excel how-to. In fact, you could even say it’s not a tip ab...
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How to launch Jupyter notebooks from Windows
To be honest, Python is not the easiest program to manage on your PC. I suggest newcomers download it from Anaconda because it does most of the behind-the-scenes lifting for you.Completely new to Python? Check out my Python launch checklistAmong other benefits, Anaconda comes with many of the crucial packages for data analysis in Python (packages...
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Free checklist: 30 days to Python programmer
Python has become in many ways the lingua franca of computing, with the open source language being used in everything from web development to artificial intelligence to… why, yes… data analytics.If you’re a heavy Excel or Power BI user, Python is a great tool to add to your toolkit — it’s officially supported in Power BI now and an offi...
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Python was not designed for data analysis (and why that’s OK)
A major reason I think it’s easier for Excel users to pick up R versus Python is that these tools tend to “think” more similarly than Python. See what I mean here: let’s take a range of numbers and attempt to multiply it by two using the built-in range, vector and list objects in Excel, Python and R respectively:multiply-range-by-two-in-e...
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