Publications by George Mount
Learning guide: Python for Excel users, half-day workshop
Data is data, so why should it be / Python and Excel go awkwardly?OK, I’m no lyricist, but there is a beauty in build one skill set off of another.I believe that every data analyst should have in their “stack” of tools a spreadsheet application, BI/dashboarding program, database and programming language. For that last category, Python is a ...
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Join me on Clubhouse: “Analytics in Excel, Python and R” April 21st at 8pm Eastern
I usually stay away from the “next big thing:” I’ve never logged into TikTok, and don’t get me started about the trendy restaurants here in Cleveland (I don’t find writing my own hot dog order on a clipboard fun or amusing.).However, I wasn’t able to stay away from Clubhouse, the trendy new drop-i...
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Why most “coding for spreadsheet users” training fails
Excel is arguably the world’s largest coding community, with 750 million users worldwide. Many of us, myself included, get introduced to the data world from Excel.But the thing is… Excel is not coding, not exactly. Like any software, Excel has its limitations, which a full-borne programming language like R or Python can make up for.This is a ...
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The learning theories behind Advancing into Analytics
Technical books are curious in a lot of ways, including this one: most technical authors don’t typically teach or write for a living. They’re technicians who happen to write a book. That means that while you may get the most brilliant technical know-how, you may not receive it in a format best suited to understand and retain it. Lots of techn...
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Advancing into Analytics: What’s with the bird?
Technical publishers are an interesting case study. With most trade books, readers hardly know or are concerned with the publisher. There might be a tiny penguin or house on the corner of the cover, but that’s the only marking.By contrast, you can usually tell the publisher of a technical book before anything else, even before its author. And t...
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A tour of Python + Jupyter Notebooks
In an earlier post I offered a tour of RStudio, the popular integrated development environment and my preferred interface for teaching R. With Python, I favor Jupyter notebooks so figured a similar tour would be worth it.This post lays out the basics of Jupyter, how to navigate the interface, and how to execute Python code with it.What are Jupyte...
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Five ways to get help in Python
In an earlier blog post I offered five ways to get help in R. This post serves as the Python equivalent, assuming you are working in Jupyter notebooks. 0. Web search itThis one seems obvious, but is worth pointing out. If you get an error message, plug it into a search engine. If you would like to know “How to do X…” well, chances are other...
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Zero-based indexing: What it is and when you’ve seen it before
Have you ever needed to pull the first record of a dataset? What about the last, or maybe even the seventeenth? This is called indexing. There’s a lot of data out there, and indexing gives us a set of rules to extract by position.Except… not every program indexes the same way. In particular, there is a difference in how to count the element i...
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Advancing into Analytics office hours on Clubhouse: Weds Jul 28, 3p Eastern
I’m always looking for new ways to engage with my audience and talk analytics — and Clubhouse, the drop-in audio app, is one of them. I’ve done one Clubhouse session before, and I think it’s time for another.Join me Wednesday, July 28th at 3p Eastern for an open Q&A/office hours related to my book Advancing into Analytics: From Excel to P...
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Advancing into Analytics: the reading list
You can learn a lot about a book by reviewing its bibliography: often, an author’s biases and beliefs will be on full display there.I suppose that’s the same for me: if you list all the books I cited in Advancing into Analytics: From Excel to Python and R, you’ll see that I really like O’Reilly books, and that you need to know more than s...
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