If you still have a Commodore 64 in your basement, you could run a one-line maze generator, in Basic. If your mom threw out that C64, years ago, you can do something similar in Microsoft Excel.
On Google+, Graeme McRae posted a VBA function that will create a maze, using a random string of / and \ characters.
Here’s a maze that I created in Excel 2013, with a gold background, and bold font. That should keep your kids (or you) busy for a while!
Contextures Posts
Here’s what I posted last week:
- I announced the winners in the giveaway for Jon Peltier’s new Advanced Excel Chart Utility. The names are listed here.
- Show fiscal year and fiscal month totals in a pivot table, by adding calculations in the source data.
- Create a family tree in Excel, using Smart Art’s organization chart, and VBA, with a sample file from Prof. Lee Townsend.
- If you use Feedly to follow all the Excel blogs, be sure to download your RSS feeds, just in case the problems continue on that site.
- Finally, for a humorous peek at what other people are saying about spreadsheets, read this week’s collection of Excel tweets, on my Excel Theatre blog.
Other Excel Articles
Here are a few of the Excel articles that I read last week, that you might find useful:
- Chandoo has posted the 49 entries in his dashboard contest. You’ll get lots of ideas for your dashboard if you look though the list, and download the sample files.
- It’s easy to add alternating colours to rows in a table – just use one of the built-in styles. If you want irregular banding, to highlight repeated items, Doug Glancy explains how to set that up.
- Dick Kusleika explains how to calculate tiered commissions, and why he uses scientific notation for the large numbers.
- If you’re thinking about moving your Excel file to the web, Pat Howe has some tips to help you prepare it.
- When you’re ready for a break from the World Cup, you can follow golf instead. Erik Svensen shows how to create the leaderboard of the US Open Golf championship in Excel, with Power BI.
- Which door should you choose? Will you win the car or a goat? Keith Rozario tests the Monty Hall problem in Excel.
Excel Announcements
Here are some upcoming events, courses recently published books, and other new items, related to Excel.
- Charles Williams has released a new version his add-in, FastExcel V3, and you’ll get 50% off the bundle price, if you use Coupon Code FXLV3Intro (valid until July 31 2014)
- The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group – EuSpRIG –has announced the preliminary program for Eusprig 2014. This event will be held in Delft (Netherlands) on July 3, 2014. Read more about it on Patrick O’Beirne’s blog.
Share Your Events and Articles
If you read or wrote any other interesting Excel articles recently, or have upcoming Excel events, please share a link in the comments below, with a brief description. Thanks!
_____________________
__________________________________
Thanks for the link. Hope the spreadsheet helped people visualize the monty hall problem.
Keith
Thanks Keith, I’m sure it helped.
Thanks for rounding me up! Until this week I had never heard of the Monty Hall problem, but it came up somewhere on Stack Overflow the other day and I was just reading about it on Wikipedia as well.
It’s not new, but this article by Charley Kyd on using text files as a data source was very helpful on a recent project: http://exceluser.com/formulas/msquery-excel-text-files.htm.
Thanks for the link Doug!
And maybe someone will write about the odds of seeing 3 Monty Hall articles in the same week.
Snort!
The odds are good…I saw an episode of MythBusters last week here in New Zealand that covered the Monty Hall paradox. Now, where’s my prize. I elect to switch.