Time for a quick personal update.
We (Jo, kids & I) are moving to New Zealand on July 15th. We are going to Wellington and will be living there for next 2 years.
New Zealand…Really? Why? How?
To understand that, we need to go back in time, to EDATE(TODAY(), -75). In April 2010, I moved back to India from Denmark. By then our twins were 6 months old. Although Jo & I are peripatetic, we brushed aside the travel urges so that we can take care of the kids and watch them grow. So we settled in Visakhapatnam, a beautiful coastal town in southern India. We bought a car, house and made it our home.
But every now and then we travel. We were fortunate to visit Thailand, Australia, Maldives, Singapore and USA during last 6 years. As the kids got older, we revisited the idea of travel. This time, we wanted to be gone for a while. Since the kids are of school going age, we wanted to be in a country where they can enjoy schooling (and easily transition to India, should we decide to come back). This means, we can only go to English speaking countries. We narrowed down the list to New Zealand, USA & Australia. The visa process for USA is complex, lengthy, uncertain and costly. Since we have been to Australia a few times, we wanted to try a new place. So New Zealand it is.
Then, in early 2015, we applied for long term New Zealand visa. This is called skilled migrant category visa (SMC). The process took almost an year and just before Christmas 2015, we heard from the NZ migration authorities that our application is accepted and we can travel. It took another 3 months to complete the visa formalities (visa stamps in passport, migrant levy payment etc.)
We then wanted to wait until July so that kids can complete their school year in India (and I can eat mangoes during the season #yummy). So that is how the travel date of July 15 got fixed.
Our New Zealand plans
New Zealand is a beautiful country and there are so many things to do. We are looking forward to,
- Hiking famous and remote walks of NZ.
- Cycling beautiful trails
- Camping and RVing
- Making new friends
- Learning new skills (carpentry, open water swimming, skiing and growing hens)
- Run a few meetups & live Excel classes in New Zealand
Of course, those are our long-term plans. During the first 8 weeks of arrival, we will be busy with the usual stuff like,
- Finding a place to live
- Enrolling kids in to school
- Arranging transport (car & cycles)
- Figuring out usual things (groceries, bank, phone, internet etc.)
If you live in Wellington and would like to catch up or help me, please email at chandoo.d@gmail.com.
How does this impact Chandoo.org & you
Not much really. I have been a bit lazy wit blogging since Jan 2016 because we are preparing for the travel and dealing with associated emotions. But blogging should pick up from end of August. All our courses, products and ebooks will be available as usual. Our support will be regular too. I will be resuming the podcast from August. So, more awesomeness for you all in all.
Once we settle down in NZ, I plan to run live classes in Auckland, Wellington & Christ Church.
Thank you for making this happen
Thank you from bottom of heart. Without your support, love and willingness to learn, I could not have dreamt of this. Thank you for making Chandoo.org a partner in your journey to awesomeness. You are one of a kind.
Thanks also to the amazing people at ENZ.org, who helped me at all stages of this migration.
8 Responses to “Pivot Tables from large data-sets – 5 examples”
Do you have links to any sites that can provide free, large, test data sets. Both large in diversity and large in total number of rows.
Good question Ron. I suggest checking out kaggle.com, data.world or create your own with randbetween(). You can also get a complex business data-set from Microsoft Power BI website. It is contoso retail data.
Hi Chandoo,
I work with large data sets all the time (80-200MB files with 100Ks of rows and 20-40 columns) and I've taken a few steps to reduce the size (20-60MB) so they can better shared and work more quickly. These steps include: creating custom calculations in the pivot instead of having additional data columns, deleting the data tab and saving as an xlsb. I've even tried indexmatch instead of vlookup--although I'm not sure that saved much. Are there any other tricks to further reduce the file size? thanks, Steve
Hi Steve,
Good tips on how to reduce the file size and / or process time. Another thing I would definitely try is to use Data Model to load the data rather than keep it in the file. You would be,
1. connect to source data file thru Power Query
2. filter away any columns / rows that are not needed
3. load the data to model
4. make pivots from it
This would reduce the file size while providing all the answers you need.
Give it a try. See this video for some help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7bpysO3FQ
Normally when Excel processes data it utilizes all four cores on a processor. Is it true that Excel reduces to only using two cores When calculating tables? Same issue if there were two cores present, it would reduce to one in a table?
I ask because, I have personally noticed when i use tables the data is much slower than if I would have filtered it. I like tables for obvious reasons when working with datasets. Is this true.
John:
I don't know if it is true that Excel Table processing only uses 2 threads/cores, but it is entirely possible. The program has to be enabled to handle multiple parallel threads. Excel Lists/Tables were added long ago, at a time when 2 processes was a reasonable upper limit. And, it could be that there simply is no way to program table processing to use more than 2 threads at a time...
When I've got a large data set, I will set my Excel priority to High thru Task Manager to allow it to use more available processing. Never use RealTime priority or you're completely locked up until Excel finishes.
That is a good tip Jen...