It was a busy and stressful week, with all kinds of computer fun – plugin updates that killed my blog, a touchpad that refused to turn off, Outlook contacts all disappearing into the iCloud, lots of laptop restarts, and much, much more. Good times!
So, instead of something serious and educational, let’s have an Excel sing-along!
The Long Ago Tweet
You can blame Facebook for this idea. It showed one of my old Excel Twitters posts as a “Memories for this day”, so I went to take a look. The post was from September 2008 (I’ve been doing this for way too long), and one of the tweets mentioned a kids’ chart song from PBS.
For those of you futzing with Excel on a Friday afternoon: “Some charts look like a pie and you know that’s sweet”
The old link didn’t work, but I tracked down the video, so we could relive that happy moment. “Why not make lots and lots of charts, about everything? Charts Rule!”
The Pivot Table Song
At the end of that Chart Video tweet, I had added an editor’s note:
Ed. note: Pivot tables need a theme song too!
Well, it took about 2.5 years, but finally my wish came true, in May 2011. Stephen Boyd uploaded his Pivot Table Song video, for a group project in one of his classes. I posted it here a few years ago, but it’s time to watch it again. The lyrics are below, so sing along. Who cares what the cubicle neighbours think?
Pivot Table Song Lyrics
Here are the lyrics for the pivot table song, in case you want to sing along. And who could resist?
Sittin’ here I got so much data
Gonna take forever so I think I’ll do it later
Calculatin’ all these numbers by hand
Can take a whole afternoon and that sounds pretty bland
Until my friend tells me all about the pivot table
Too good to be true, sounds more like a fable
An easy way to organize this data with ease?
Sign me up, teach me how, cuz that’s the bees knees
Pivot tables make everything just right
I can use them all hours till the daylight
In a hurry and you don’t have forever?
Couple clicks and the numbers come together
A pivot table helps you to condense your information
Into a single table, which limits your frustration
It can sort, it can count, it can give total amounts
It can take a bunch of numbers and then spit an average out
It can make a million bits of information seem compressed
Number crunchers ’round the world know this table is the best
So when you’re using Excel and you start to feel unstable
That’s information overload, just use a pivot table
Pivot tables make everything just right
I can use them all hours till the daylight
In a hurry and you don’t have forever?
Couple clicks and the numbers come together
And when the time comes that I’m finally done
I double check my averages and all of my sums
Cuz tomorrow I gotta use em some more
That’s what a pivot table’s good for
Realistic Statistics Video
If you’re not ready to stop singing yet, here is another video that Stephen Boyd made, with his friend Derek Miller. They submitted it for the 2011 ASA “Promoting the Practice and Profession of Statistics” Video Competition.
It’s not as much fun as the pivot table video, obviously, but you can avoid work for another couple of minutes if you watch it!
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