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This video of Martin Shkreli using Excel [1] is what really made me realize I suck at Excel... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSf5YhYQbw&feature=youtu.be
by Benjammer 10y ago
This video of Martin Shkreli using Excel [1] is what really made me realize I suck at Excel...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSf5YhYQbw&feature=youtu.be&t=211 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSf5YhYQbw&feature=youtu.be...
- agumonkey 10y agoMore about finger speed. The excel part isn't that impressive. It is impressive, just that Excel has a lot to offer in terms of formulas and matrix generations that I didn't see here. I have to show this to emacsers, they're gonna feel jealous a bit.
- Kiro 10y agoDoes everyone love this guy all of a sudden? I thought he was the most hated person in the world but I don't see a single bad comment about him here or in the YouTube comments. Quite on the contrary.
- harryf 10y agoPerhaps this helps http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/martin-shkreli-pharmaceuticals-ceo-interview http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/martin-shkreli-pharma... > The identity he creates, he says, is “an extremely weird form of sarcasm.”
- FLUX-YOU 10y agoNo, he has a following. I'd say most people have no idea he does lessons and streams video games on youtube.
- kchoudhu 10y agoI'm not a fan, but I do see and appreciate his point of view. His twitter is usually a gas too.
- Bartweiss 10y agoIt feels like people react to him the way they do Al Capone or Jordan Belfort. Obviously he's a jerk, it looks like he was probably eyeballs deep in securities fraud, but it's so audacious and disconnected from real life that it's like watching a scumbag in a movie. Probably we're all better off with the law coming down on him, but that doesn't preclude a day-to-day fascination.
- refurb 10y agoI'm sure this helps.... https://www.thestreet.com/story/13696336/1/retrophin-with-help-from-martin-shkreli-advances-drug-for-rare-kidney-disease.html https://www.thestreet.com/story/13696336/1/retrophin-with-he...
- nocman 10y agoMight be of help to someone else to realize that you are talking about Martin Shkreli, rather than Spolsky. I missed the parent you were referencing, and thought one of the child comments was saying that Joel Spolsky was out on bail for securities fraud (which was the result, obviously, of me not catching who you were talking about) oops! :-D
- greenshackle 10y agoOoooh thanks. I've been reading a lot of Spolsky's blog posts from 2005-2006... I was thinking, what's happened to this guy in the last 10 years? Everyone hates him? Securities fraud? What?
- kolbe 10y agoMy opinion of the guy rose sharply after I learned that his drug pricing practices were standard for the industry, and that he did nothing that other companies like Valeant and Allergan have been doing at 100x the scale.
- wodenokoto 10y agoWell, first of all, he is mentioned here solely on his Excel process, and in that regards, his tweets about Harambe or purchase of a hip hop album are completely irrelevant, and honestly it is nice to see a community that can discuss a part of a persons work without tainting the view of that with other workings of said person. But if you do hate him, you can apparently call him and tell him why and he'll take the time to discuss with you why you hate him, and he does this quite calmly and rationally (given the situation)[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuinpSlKFEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuinpSlKFEo
- unixhero 10y agoSee his video linked above. It's really good and its clear the guy is bright.
- hawkice 10y agoThat is an oddly fascinating video. He's quite good. I mean, he's out on bail pending charges for securities fraud, but in a way it makes sense, this would be an important skillset for that sort of grift.
- NamTaf 10y agoHe's efficient at doing some financial analysis and knows what to look at. It's logical that he was able to find good deals and then exploit them.
- mapt 10y agoIs he on bail for charges that were uniquely mendacious? Or is it just that everyone in the industry that's competent breaks certain rules, and he's been targetted for being a giant asshole in a public way.
- hawkice 10y agoHe's being charged with running a Ponzi-like scheme and being "engaged in multiple schemes to ensnare investors through a web of lies and deceit". A lot of people in his business are aggressive and less than forthright. Securities fraud is _quite a bit more serious and less common than those personality flaws_.
- Senji 10y agoThe second.
- denzil_correa 10y agoI didn't know about him. I made a search and found out that he challenged Chris Evans (Captain America star) to a fight! http://www.thewrap.com/martin-shkreli-challenges-captain-america-star-chris-evans-to-a-fight-ill-f-ing-destroy/ http://www.thewrap.com/martin-shkreli-challenges-captain-ame...
- flycaliguy 10y agoI finally understand what ASMR is.
- refurb 10y agoVery common in investment banking. You're trained to use excel without a mouse or by navigating the menus. All the shortcuts are memorized.
- ddeck 10y agoI've had colleagues that disconnected their juniors' mice to ensure this. The reliance on excel in all aspects of investment banking is remarkable. From the simple stuff in corporate finance (merger analysis, capital issuance etc.) to complex derivatives pricing on the market side. On the pricing side, external libraries typically handle the heavy lifting, but excel is the glue that brings it together. Certainly not the most efficient tool - I've had spreadsheets that take over an hour to calculate. You'd hit F9 and head out to lunch.
- blowski 10y agoExactly - its efficiency is that the analysts can write the formulas themselves instead of briefing a development team and waiting a week.
- Bartweiss 10y agoGood point. The upside of Excel is that in return for predictably slow execution, you get a tool that can be used on the fly without learning SQL or adding a DBA layer to every task.
- mack73 10y agoIf you and your parent poster are right about why Excel is so prominent, and I personaly think both of you are, then we might be able to see a shift in economics and businessmanship and in the way Excel formulas play a large part of what it is that makes the world go 'round, once business men start to learn how to program, or when Excel start's to learn to talk "business", but no earlier than that. Which movement do you think is strongest? The AI camp or the ones that think programming should absolutely be a part of a proper education in business or economics? I hope for the latter, because I think it will be the end of the huge gap there is today, between the decision makers and the engineers, two groups who quite often but for no good reason feel alienated from each other.
- unixhero 10y agoI totally enjoyed that Shkreli video. Didn't watch it all but I think I will. I always wondered how do you do this horizontal or vertical fill with formula's using the keyboard? This inspired me to look for more Excel hacking videos on YouTube.
- tedsanders 10y agoCtrl+R fills right from the leftmost selected cell. Ctrl+D fills down from the topmost selected cell.
- unixhero 10y agoThanks!
- ableal 10y agoAnd OpenOffice used to omit those, if memory serves. (Checking ... Libre Office 4.4 has Ctrl-D ... ah well.)
- robocaptain 10y agoHoly crap that's super useful. For whatever reason I never could figure out (or remember) a shortcut for the 'filldown button'. Instead I would copy the cell I wanted, and then control+arrow my way to the fill destination, shift+control+arrow my way back, and then paste. This way is a lot simpler and should cause fewer mistakes.
- to3m 10y agoHandy in conjunction with End,<arrow key>, which offhand (I don't have Excel on this PC) does something like: find the next entirely blank row/column in that direction, then extend selection to it (exclusive). If you've got gaps you can just repeat it. So, if you've got one column filled in for every row, and one row filled in for every column, you can quickly select the whole box and fill it down from the first row.
- 10y ago
- awl130 10y agounbelievable that he's manually inputting all the numbers. either import directly from yahoo / google finance or capital iq.
- slap_shot 10y agoIt's entirely intentional. The point isn't just to transpose the numbers from one medium to another; it is to understand what the numbers mean. The best way to do that is the way Martin does it in that video. That's how anyone who does this professionally does it.
- eru 10y agoIsn't this more error prone?
- beepboopbeep 10y agoAbsolutely. But the OPs comment is spot on. Do it manually when you start out and you'll quickly learn both the importance of the numbers you're typing in and common issues you can run into with either manually inputting data or in structuring the model (or that one time you fat fingered a number and blew out everything driven by it)
- roel_v 10y agoI work as a scientific programmer and I used to have that reflex; even deriding others who couldn't or wouldn't automate such things for wasting time. To me, 'data' was just a blob, to be looked at as little as possible. I've done a 180 on that. The other day I started work on making a plant database, by hand; from designing the schema (columns and sheets in Excel really - blasphemy!) to typing in the values from encyclopedias, wikipedia and books by hand (ok, the latin names I copy/paste). Yes I could just use one of the several large, well-known databases; or one of the hundreds of specific-purpose ones. But making this database has taught me so much already, things I never would have learnt if I'd spend that time on writing import scripts. Nowadays I let my students/analysts first do extensive eda, which is usually lots of tedious work that seems a waste of time to the programmer instinct. But it's not.
- NamTaf 10y agoI really like the subtle animation on all updated cells as he types in a value. By default excel just updates it instantly but that makes it hard to see the scope of your change by eye. A quick scope through the options doesn't show what makes it do that. Anyone know?
- m_gloeckl 10y agoIIRC those animations have been introduced with the current version, Office 2016. I think they make it really easy to follow, especially when someone else is editing and sharing their screen.
- cm2187 10y agoExactly, office 2016 is office 2010 with another color scheme and "new features" like this...
- Quppa 10y agoOffice 2013 introduced these animations. Sadly, it also ditched ClearType in most of the UI.
- JensRex 10y agoWhich is why I'm sticking with Office 2010. Microsoft totally wrecked font rendering in Windows 10 (W8 too?). Edge browser doesn't have ClearType either, which is braindead for a program you spend so much time reading in.
- Quppa 10y agoEdge 14 in the Anniversary Update actually brings back ClearType support for at least some text, so there's still a glimmer of hope that Microsoft will work to improve text rendering in Windows. Raymond Chen had an interesting post on how subpixel scrolling makes ClearType smoothing impossible: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20150129-00/?p=44803 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20150129-00/?p=...
- bpizzi 10y agoI don't get why he's drawing a line instead or putting a proper border... Anyone got the subtility or is it that he just don't know about borders?
- roenxi 10y agoVisually both are good enough. Moving a line is 1x mouse click and a wrist flick, Borders are more work than that.
- duncanawoods 10y agoPossibly because a border is part of a column so if you insert a new column adjacent to a border you have to remove the old one and redraw it which is pretty annoying because its tucked behind a few clicks and menus. A line however floats relative to the columns so you don't have to remove/redraw it. At worst you might have to move it.
- squimmy 10y agoHe explains that by using a line he can more easily move it "when the quarters move". Using a border would require removing the border and adding a new one every three months. A line can be dragged around at will. This also makes it more useful for miscellaneous illustrative purposes.
- davej 10y agoI'm an excel noob but doesn't table mode fix all this.
- wodenokoto 10y agoThe name Shkreli didn't immediately ring a bell for me, and I found this very candid interview with him on CBS News. He is very open and no-filter on every question, some of it makes a lot of sense, some of it is quite far out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoMlxVimwiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoMlxVimwiU
- MIKarlsen 10y agoIt's not a "good deal" because it's not consumption for the sake of consumption. High drug prices hit those unfortunate enough to be born with a sickness, and some of those people might have a hard time with their lives if majority of their time is spent earning enough to pay their medicine. However, I like that he then goes on to say that there should be a system that takes care of the people who CANNOT afford the drug (government-funded or a corporate-driven solution of some sort). The whole business take on medication and health care just seems crazy for a scandinavian citizen like myself.
- kbenson 10y agoThe free market take is that competition allows for faster development of more newer, better, cheaper drugs overall. That may mean the occasional crazy pricing, especially in a constrained market where only a few entities can supply a need. The socialist take is that the government should intervene in cases where a need isn't being met in a sustainable way by the market, and people are suffering. Another way to look at it might be that one prioritizes the future over the present. I don't think it's controversial to say that both these are true in certain situations, and sometimes those situations overlap (such as with medicine). In a perfect world, we would have all the benefits of both the free market and socialist takes, without the downsides associated with each. It's possible we might be able to approximate this somewhat, such as with Shkreli's suggestion that the government take over production of generics. Other options are better public funding of research and development, so drug companies can shoulder less of that cost (and thus charge less to recoup investment and make a profit). In the end, I think neither system is perfect, and both have very real advantages that we need to be careful not to discount.
- 10y ago
- rsp1984 10y agoFor those who don't recognize the name Martin Shkreli: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251637
- chrisan 10y agoThe biggest excel lesson I learned from him A1=13.5 B1=A1*55.5555
- tempodox 10y agoWhat's so special about 749.99925?
- boflynn 10y agohttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-overnight-increase-in-a-drugs-price-raises-protests.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-overnight-... The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager [Shkreli]. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- youdontknowtho 10y agoIs this the Turing Pharma guy? Weird. He's got crazy Excel skills, though.
- kozikow 10y agoAlthough somewhat impressive, majority of us are similarly skilled with our editor/IDE of choice. My Emacs and IntelliJ workflows would probably look similarly advanced to non-programmers. What's more, Emacs have its own spreadsheet app that I like more than excel: http://orgmode.org/manual/The-spreadsheet.html http://orgmode.org/manual/The-spreadsheet.html .
- lindbergh 10y agoorg is really slow when it gets to calculated column on a moderately sized table however.
- kozikow 10y agoAh, interesting. Tbh I rarely used spreadsheet capabilities and I usually used ob-ipython to load table to pandas in python and after manipulation write it back to org. I mostly use org tables for occasional manual data manipulation. One problem with excel is that temporary steps you went through are hidden - it's hard to reproduce the excel spreadsheet. With org mode + ipython workflow I can trace all transformations that led to the end table, but hide them when they are not relevant. I believe this gets me the best of both worlds - some form of WYSIWYG tables like excel + IDE-like programming environment in python and version control. Excel obviously lacks proper programming tools. Jupyter notebook does not treat printed tables in a special way org does. I wrote once a too long blog post about my org-mode data analysis workflow, part about pandas integration: https://kozikow.com/2016/05/21/very-powerful-data-analysis-environment-org-mode-with-ob-ipython/#Org-table-to-pandas-and-plotting https://kozikow.com/2016/05/21/very-powerful-data-analysis-e... . What do you tend to use instead of org spreadsheet?
- leshow 10y agoHe could really use a tiling wm like i3 in his setup. my other tiling bros will agree that the mouse is for suckers.
- hood_syntax 10y agoSeems like it would be right up his alley too. xmonad is my personal favorite, but there are a lot of good ones out there (i3 included)
- shostack 10y agoInteresting bit at 53:40ish about eBays SEO strategy as it relates to their collecting structured data and solving a product shelf time problem.