Data Smart, 2nd Edition

Acknowledgments

Life has a weird way of coming full circle. I read the original Data Smart when it first came out in 2013. I had no imagination back then I would write the revised edition. Yet, here I am. If fate brought me to this place, it's because I love Excel. Therefore, it only makes sense to first acknowledge the Excel product team at Microsoft, who've managed to push Excel beyond the tool it was back in 2013.

As a Microsoft MVP, I've met some incredible folks at Microsoft over the years, who've really listened and understood the ways in which my community uses Excel. In particular, I would like to acknowledge David Gainer, Guy Lev, and Joe McDaid for continually expanding the product.

I would also like to acknowledge my peers in the Excel community who pushed the product beyond its limitations for the good of the whole. As it relates to the material in this book, I must mention George Mount, Oz du Soleil, Carlos Barboza, and Roberto Mensa for challenging the norm.

I also have to give major credit to the book's first author, John Foreman. If you weren't in the data space back in 2013, you should know it was a different world. In those days, people were enamored by the idea of “big data.” Companies were rushing to implement technologies that could handle large datasets before they even had high-quality data.

But then there was John's book, which showed people how to do (or at the very least, teach) data science without big data technologies—you could just use Excel. John ...