f l u e n c y f u m b l e

It is probably safe to assume that the average middle-class white kid of my generation, raised during the rise of AOL and home computing, is at least somewhat familiar with Microsoft Excel. Such was the challenge for Chapter 13’s FLAG: Show us something we don’t know.

The group performed admirably.

I always assumed myself fluent in Excel. Throwing values into cells, arranging and ordering data, even a bit of calculating with formulas, I felt comfortable listing it on my resume as an application where I had achieved “proficiency.” Reviewing Snyder’s presentation on conditional formatting/calculation and truncating values convinces me that I should rethink it — I have much left to learn. The sheer number of Excel functions available is daunting, and many of them are statistical and mathematical formulas I will likely never grasp.

This makes me wonder: What else don’t I know?

More than likely, I could stand a brush-up in each of the programs I’ve listed on my resume. While it’s probably nigh impossible to “master” a program without having been involved with its programming, fluency is a spectrum, and it’s difficult to know where you stand without knowing what there is to learn.

A quick search turns up some Excel capabilities that would certainly make work easier:
Lookup table: Allows you to define fields in another spreadsheet from which you’d like to gather information. It can be used conditionally (lookup “tax capacity” where county = “Allegheny,” for example) or simply to view data in new combinations.
User-defined function : For those interested in complex mathematics or text manipulation: Create and apply your own formulas. How ambitious.
Autonumber : I had previously heard that this was impossible in Excel, so I am quite glad to learn that it does work.

I suppose this week’s lesson was one on the nature of fluency as well as practical Excel skills: There’s no upper bound to fluency.