Percent change: Know the formula

Here’s a question I posed to some college students recently:
Let’s say you cover the Town of East Middleburgtown. The mayor announces that this year’s town budget comes in at $12.6 million. Last year’s budget was $11.4 million. What is the percent change? Better yet, what’s the formula for figuring it out?
If you don’t know [...]

Excel: Combine text and formulas in a cell

Whenever I analyze data in Excel, I format the spreadsheet to make it easier to read. A little attention to fonts, boxes and shading can help people understand the key data faster.
One way to give yourself some flexibility with formatting is to combine text and the results of a formula in a single cell. [...]

me

Me, in brief

I'm Anthony DeBarros. Thanks for visiting my site. My daily sphere's complex -- I'm a journalist, husband, dad, musician, native New Yorker, data miner, teacher, coder, writer and truth seeker -- so, as often as I can, I like to watch the sky and dream.
MISCELLANY

my places

LinkedIn
Twitter
Delicious
Tumblr

sites

Spelling Bee blog
- Tales from our trips to the Scripps National Spelling Bee

360 Sports Jam
- My teen journalist's sports blog