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Anyone certified in excel?

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03gade
Posts: 856 - Karma: 3,263
I'm thinking about going for the master certification, i didn't know anything about excel last week, i'm finishing up a 6 hr training video tomorrow and then gonna watch some more in depth ones. hopefully after tomorrow i should be good to go for the specialist certification but i feel like putting master on my resume will mean alot more.


Any tips on where to get good info/the test?
Apr 4 2013 8:54PM
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Brenone
Posts: 4944 - Karma: 296
Seriously. What does being certified mean?
I use it daily.
Apr 4 2013 9:15PM
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Darth.Maul
Posts: 2472 - Karma: 652
I made a sudoku solver in excel GOML
Apr 4 2013 9:16PM
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A^frame
Posts: 297 - Karma: 297
getting certified essentially means you go to a community college or technical college and your current degree holds no water. But if that is the case, get certified.
Apr 4 2013 9:17PM
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first_rodeo
Posts: 2385 - Karma: 7,781
is this university or vocational?
Apr 4 2013 9:18PM
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SK1ERDUDE
Posts: 1365 - Karma: 51
Needed to be certified as a requirement for the Business School at the University of Denver. Its really easy and you have unlimited tries as long as you pay for them. Just keep retaking the exam until you pass if you have no way of studying.
Apr 4 2013 9:20PM
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clive_bixby
Posts: 1834 - Karma: 499
ask around the streets, they say i'm certified
Apr 4 2013 9:21PM
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Barefootin_Fiend
Posts: 7618 - Karma: 4,727
had no idea you could get certified in excel, but i'm a fucking wizard at it. that's what happens when it's the first program you open and the last one you close 8-10 hours later, 5 days a week...year after year.


Apr 4 2013 9:21PM
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Piste.Off
Posts: 11586 - Karma: 1,860
I had to take a semester long class doing nothing but Microsoft Office projects for our business school. So basically I'm a certified wizard in everything excel.
Apr 4 2013 9:25PM
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chicken
Posts: 6843 - Karma: 2,123
excel? like the software?

it's a generic spreadsheet package... can you also get certified in ms word? haha

if you need to use a basic spreadsheet program you should use gnumeric anyways.
Apr 4 2013 9:28PM
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Barefootin_Fiend
Posts: 7618 - Karma: 4,727
except gnumeric doesn't support pivot tables, vba macros, etc. (yeah, i know most people don't use that stuff... )
Apr 4 2013 9:38PM
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grapejuice3000+
Posts: 2132 - Karma: 1,985
i made a version of shredsauce for excel, pretty cool all my classmates want to play but i'm too busy playing it.
Apr 4 2013 9:52PM
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Darth.Maul
Posts: 2472 - Karma: 652
I use them! Pivot tables make Stats a breeze when trying to create complex graphs of data.

And VBA macros are fun to just fuck around with. (Like making the sudoku solver i mentioned earlier)
Apr 5 2013 1:21AM
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ThaLorax
Posts: 21083 - Karma: 8,455
What? I did the Business School at DU for a year and didn't have to get "certified" for anything.
Apr 5 2013 1:28AM
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DrZoidberg
Posts: 5675 - Karma: 4,268
I was trying to use solver on this kids computer, and for some reason it was in french and he didn't have the option to change it to english. So it was pretty entertaining to try and make it do what we wanted.

Are you certified in french excel?
Apr 5 2013 1:31AM
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chicken
Posts: 6843 - Karma: 2,123
ughhh

excel is NOT meant for stats or graphs! neither is gnumeric, but they have at least fixed the problems that excel has with precision. Microsoft has ignored this problem for over a decade.

Free and a million times better than excel:

http://www.r-project.org/

http://plplot.sourceforge.net/
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
http://www.scilab.org/

and for graphing/fitting basic stuff in a more familiar way to excel users (uses tables) use qti-plot:

http://soft.proindependent.com/qtiplot.html

it's free (gratis) for linux and cheap for mac osx/windows. It's open source so you could install it free on mac/windows but I would just pay for the precompiled binary.

Sci Davis is similar (but more limited in functionality) but free for all platforms.

If you want to waste time and money using excel, then go for it. I think that gnumeric or libre office are both powerful enough for what these programs are built for. I use libre office to keep track of my marks and my bills. That's what these programs are designed to do. To quickly set up a sheet to calculate stuff. It's not the proper tool for doing real work.

Take the time to learn the proper software and soon enough it will pay off and you will save lots of time in the long run.
It's the exact same for like ms word.

Sure it might be ok for like a term paper, but imagine how much of a headache it would be to write your masters thesis in word! You might as well learn LaTeX now (or start with LyX).
Apr 5 2013 10:38AM
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SK1ERDUDE
Posts: 1365 - Karma: 51
It was a lab attached to the business information and analylitics class.
Apr 5 2013 10:40AM
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chicken
Posts: 6843 - Karma: 2,123
oh sorry. I said "real work".
Apr 5 2013 12:03PM
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Darth.Maul
Posts: 2472 - Karma: 652
I only have to take Stats 201 for my major so it works just fine for doing the simple stuff like 1 and 2 factor experiments and ANOVA tables.
Apr 5 2013 12:34PM
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Barefootin_Fiend
Posts: 7618 - Karma: 4,727
out of curiosity, if use in the business world isn't "real work", what exactly is your definition of "real work". as an accountant, i can't even imagine doing my job without excel.
Apr 5 2013 8:14PM
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chicken
Posts: 6843 - Karma: 2,123
STEM fields.

I was just kidding around though because he coolly said it as if everyone goes into business. Maybe your run-of-the-mill cubical worker can get by with excel (or probably libre office as well). But it's not like the folks at CERN or NASA are doing their work on it.
Apr 5 2013 11:06PM
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chicken
Posts: 6843 - Karma: 2,123
are you using LaTeX for your masters?
Apr 5 2013 11:08PM
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grown-ninja
Posts: 3031 - Karma: 175
Certs don't mean shit, just a way for schools to get money, past an undergraduate level. I use excel almost every day at work. It's nice to understand how it works, you learn it while you use it
Apr 5 2013 11:11PM
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DrZoidberg
Posts: 5675 - Karma: 4,268
I actually use excel to analyze a decent amount of chemistry data. But that's because chemists from the dark ages went through stupid amounts of math to lineariz everything because plotting anything other than a straight line by hand was impossible. You end up plotting the ln of the inverse of the concentration or something else weird though.

But I want to learn fancy computer shit eventually.
Apr 5 2013 11:39PM
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gotti
Posts: 4269 - Karma: 4,550
hes obviously better than you
Apr 5 2013 11:44PM
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Brenone
Posts: 4944 - Karma: 296
Agreed. Ive been using Excel at work for 10+ years now. I use it to underwrite real estate development deals and although the IRR calc is slighlty skewed it is still the universal program that is used by finance/accoutning people.
Apr 6 2013 1:26AM
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Arabian
Posts: 686 - Karma: 1,125
No. No no no no no no no. R is one of the worst languages I have ever had the displeasure of programming in. Even Numpy (and people know me to be a Python hater - especially v3.2 and it's list-type and monadic syntax) is a better option. Optimally, Mathematica is best, since it has the only competent resolution of floating point errors for large sig figs. R is like the Ruby of stats languages - there are better out there.
Apr 6 2013 1:41AM
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chicken
Posts: 6843 - Karma: 2,123
come back with free (libre) software and I might listen to you.

PS. Sage is gonna take over (in all it's python glory).
Apr 6 2013 2:47AM
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Arabian
Posts: 686 - Karma: 1,125
Ugh. Freetards. I'm sure you're running R on your Yeelong notebook, since it's the only one that actually uses completely FOSS software including 3rd party BIOS. If not, I'm sure you're using one of the FOSS Linux distributions, since the BSD and MIT licenses are considered to unrestrictive to be FOSS. If not, since most FOSS distros are unusable (even Debian isn't considered FOSS since it is nonfree-capable), then please don't talk to me about libreware. If you mean free as in "I don't want to pay", that's a perfectly valid argument, but not one based on performance.
Apr 6 2013 3:26AM
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Arabian
Posts: 686 - Karma: 1,125
Oh yes, and only using >=GPL v.2 licenses.
Apr 6 2013 3:28AM
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Dingo69
Posts: 1330 - Karma: -171
Spss
Apr 6 2013 4:30AM
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chicken
Posts: 6843 - Karma: 2,123
just because I prefer free software doesn't mean I have to go around acting like RMS. I'm not going to use some crazy distro just because debian gives me access to nonfree software. Maybe I should have said open source.

I never argued that the performance of free software was better. You probably know a lot more than me about why mathematica is better than R for stats. You are also probably doing way crazier stats than most scientists need to do. To be honest I don't think I know anyone who uses mathematica for stats. Even if they have it on their computer.

Either way I was recommending it as an alternative to doing stats in excel for crying out loud. Even if it's really that inferior it's still leaps and bounds ahead of excel...
Apr 6 2013 5:33AM
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03gade
Posts: 856 - Karma: 3,263
sorry i'm late, but yeah i want to get certified just cause i didn't know anything about the program and a few jobs i had to pass up, i graduated magna cum laude from uconn, so its not like i have no qualifications, i just thought it would be nice to put on my resume. also probably dumb, i just learned 2013 which i'm sure noone uses but its whats on my computer, there's no practice tests out there, but you can retry for free these days, i think im just gonna do that.
Apr 6 2013 1:30PM
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Arabian
Posts: 686 - Karma: 1,125
Libre carries a ton of baggage with it. I fully support OSS and people's choices, but FOSS is just a retarded standard. Sorry.
Apr 6 2013 2:09PM
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