Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What do you use MS Excel for?

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 36 posts

Re: Ask HN: What do you use MS Excel for?

#22
post #13

I use it to do super quick data analysis sometimes, and also I made a few spreadsheets to help my wife to manage our personal finance.

Did the same for a while, usually to have a short-term period, then I tried gnucash (no undo) and hledger which nowadays has some features for planning ahead. But still, I decided to write my own webapp for my personal finances and long-term budgeting.

If your excel files have anything for forward planning and you want to share those files, I'd be interested.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use MS Excel for?

#23
post #22
post #13

I use it to do super quick data analysis sometimes, and also I made a few spreadsheets to help my wife to manage our personal finance.

Did the same for a while, usually to have a short-term period, then I tried gnucash (no undo) and hledger which nowadays has some features for planning ahead. But still, I decided to write my own webapp for my personal finances and long-term budgeting. If your excel files have anything for forward planning and you want to share those files, I'd be interested.

> If your excel files have anything for forward planning and you want to share those files, I'd be interested.

Unfortunately there was no planning involved, one spreadsheet was just for her to put stuff she bought and the spreadsheet would calculate how much she spent in the month/week. Another one was for her to calculate how much the Saturday children center she is running would earn per month.

Since you made a webapp for personal finances, let me mention you the one a friend made: https://spendbook.net/main it doesn't do planning but I think he'll still be happy to get some feedback.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use MS Excel for?

#24
Financial modeling. I work as a corporate finance consultant and am a former investment banker, and it's an extremely valuable tool in my opinion. I think people are crazy for trying to run a company without making heavy use of a financial model.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use MS Excel for?

#25
Most excels I use are automatically generated as a build pipeline/Jenkins step (except 2 and 4)

1. Accumulating results of performance tests over time. Add columns with results for each nightly regression and keeping additional columns like std/worst/avg for last10, last100 etc.

2. Keeping indexes with locations of our data, and their meta data. So we can quickly find data that matches to specific problems we need to solve.

3. Specification files for our performance tests. Listing KPIs for specific cases, KPIs per type of machine, how to measure (bst5, avg5, single), tracking what should show up as red/green/orange in our dashboards.

4. Running FMEA using an excel FMEA template that automatically fills/calculates certain columns based on answers in the other.

5. All sorts of automatically generated regression overviews for our unit tests over periods of time. Showing trends, violations with specs, etc.

6. Sheets that are connected to our TFS so we can have overviews and do mass updates on items.

7....

Re: Ask HN: What do you use MS Excel for?

#28
post #24

Financial modeling. I work as a corporate finance consultant and am a former investment banker, and it's an extremely valuable tool in my opinion. I think people are crazy for trying to run a company without making heavy use of a financial model.

actually, I'd love to talk with you about this. I find that writing my own tools gives me what I need but takes me longer. I wrote my own ncurses spreadsheet that lets me add lambdas to be executed each cell (if the cell denies one)

I could use some advice on modeling itself too...

Re: Ask HN: What do you use MS Excel for?

#29

I spent the last year building a predictive tennis model using Google Sheets which is basically the same as Excel. I have no technical skills so this was the easiest way to do it, plus it helped me learn SQL. Basically I have around 50,000 tennis matches in one sheet, filter them into another sheet, into around 100 comparative points, then in the end produce a probability for each upcoming match, and bet accordingly.…

Hi! I did something similar a few years ago,instead I used python and machine learning algorithms + custom ELO implementations for tennis matches. Unfortunately it worked too well and I was banned from all the bookmakers.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use MS Excel for?

#30

I spent the last year building a predictive tennis model using Google Sheets which is basically the same as Excel. I have no technical skills so this was the easiest way to do it, plus it helped me learn SQL. Basically I have around 50,000 tennis matches in one sheet, filter them into another sheet, into around 100 comparative points, then in the end produce a probability for each upcoming match, and bet accordingly.…

Hi! I did something similar a few years ago,instead I used python and machine learning algorithms + custom ELO implementations for tennis matches. Unfortunately it worked too well and I was banned from all the bookmakers.

nice, well done! Why not use betfair or Molly? Or also sell tips etc? Do you have a site?
Post reply on HN