In the 19th session of Chandoo.org podcast, lets talk about modeling best practices.
What is in this session?
I am very happy to interview my good friend, blogger, author, excel trainer & business-women – Danielle Stein Fairhurst for this session. I first met Danielle when I went to Sydney, Australia in April 2012. Our friendship & collaboration grew a lot in the last 2.5 years. She is a great speaker & trainer. This episode is loaded with her trademark style commentary, explanation & tips for better modeling. I hope you will enjoy it.
In this podcast, you will learn,
- Introduction to Danielle & her work
- 6 Tips for Best Practice Modeling
- Write consistent formulas
- Avoid hard-coding
- Smart referencing
- Ditch the bad habits
- Document assumptions
- Format & label things
- Resources for learning more
Go ahead and listen to the show
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Links & Resources mentioned in this session:
Download Example Workbook
Please download the example workbook Danielle created to understand these tips.
About Danielle
- Visit Plum Solutions: her website for more tips, tutorials & articles on modeling, data analysis & Excel
- Get Danielle’s book: its great for both aspiring & working analysts (read my review)
- Join Danielle’s linked group: and network with fellow financial modelers & professionals
Learn how to create financial models in Excel
On Modeling Best Practices
- 5 tips on modeling best practices
- BASE rule for keeping your models simple
- 12 rules for making better Excel models
- 10 tips for better workbooks
- Introduction to Spreadsheet Risk Management
Other topics relevant to the podcast:
Transcript of this session:
Download this podcast transcript [PDF].
What keeps your models sane & sexy?
I use all the tips recommended by Danielle. Apart from these, I also use ideas like named ranges, structural references, separation of input & output to keep my models user friendly.
What about you? Do you apply the tips suggested by Danielle? What else do you use to make your models awesome? Please share your tips & ideas using comments.
12 Responses to “Analyzing Search Keywords using Excel : Array Formulas in Real Life”
Very interesting Chandoo, as always. Personally I find endless uses for formulae such as {=sum(if(B$2:B$5=$A2,$C$2$C$5))}, just the flexibility in absolute and relative relative referencing and multiple conditions gives it the edge over dsum and others methods.
I've added to my blog a piece on SQL in VBA that I think might be of interest to you http://aviatormonkey.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/lesson-one-sql-in-vba/ . It's a bit techie, but I think you might like it.
Keep up the good work, aviatormonkey
Hi Chandoo,
You might find this coded solution I posted on a forum interesting.
http://www.excelforum.com/excel-programming/680810-create-tag-cloud-in-vba-possible.html
[...] under certain circumstances. One of the tips involved arranging search keywords in excel using Array Forumlas. Basically, if you need to know how frequent a word or group of keywords appear, you can use this [...]
@Aviatormonkey: Thanks for sharing the url. I found it a bit technical.. but very interesting.
@Andy: Looks like Jarad, the person who emailed me this problem has posted the same in excelforum too. Very good solution btw...
Realy great article
"You can take this basic model and extend it to include parameters like number of searches each key phrase has, how long the users stay on the site etc. to enhance the way tag cloud is generated and colored."
How would you go about doing this? I think it would need some VB
Hi,
I found the usage very interesting, but is giving me hard time because the LENs formula that use ranges are not considering the full range, in other words, the LEN formula is only bringing results from the respective "line" cell.
Using the example, when I place the formula to calculate the frequency for "windows" brings me only 1 result, not 11 as displayed in the example. It seems that the LEN formula using ranges is considering the respective line within the range, not the full range.
Any hint?
@Thiago
You have to enter the formula as an Array Formula
Enter the Formula and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
Not just Enter
Thank you, Hui! I couldn't work out how this didn't work
is there a limit to the number of lines it can analyse.
Ie i am trying to get this to work on a list of sentances 1500 long.
@Gary
In Excel 2010/2013 Excel is only limited by available memory,
So just give it a go
As always try on a copy of the file first if you have any doubts
Apologies if I am missing something, but coudn't getting frequency be easier with Countif formula. Something like this - COUNTIF(Range with text,"*"&_cell with keyword_&"*")
Apologies if I missed, but what is the Array Formula to:
1. Analyze a list of URL's or a list of word phrases to understand frequency;
2. List in a nearby column from most used words to least used words;
3. Next to the list of words the count of occurrences.