Analysis

My passion is empowering organizations to make sense of their own data. A few years ago, I realized there are a ton of data analysis tutorials on the internet — great! — but they were aimed at accountants and economists. There weren’t enough tutorials for statistical analyses, so I set out to design my own training materials. Today, I offer a range of consulting services designed to meet your organization’s needs. For organizations wishing to build their capacity, I half-day and full-day workshops, hands-on webinars, and one-on-one coaching services (a great option for getting staff up to speed instantly). For organizations that need quick solutions, or heavy lifting, I offer analytic consulting services. You send me your spreadsheets and desired analyses, and I’ll crunch the numbers for you. I’ve partnered with for-profits, non-profits, foundations, government agencies, banks, law firms, and professional societies. Contact me to discuss your organization’s needs.

Recent Blog Posts

Statistical techniques, data analysis strategies, and spreadsheet shortcuts.

Hands-On Workshops on Data Analysis and Spreadsheet Secrets

Ever feel like you’re swimming upstream in data? Need to make sense of spreadsheets, but not sure where to start? Have a gut feeling that you’re not getting the most out of common software programs like Microsoft Excel? In these workshops, we cover beginner, intermediate, and advanced data analysis skills from vlookup to pivot tables. We utilize sample spreadsheets that are commonly encountered by researchers, such as survey data, outcome data, demographic data, and more. Contact me to discuss your desired customizations and my rates and availability.

Sample Agenda

Each section begins with a demonstration followed by hands-on practice.

Importing and Merging Datasets
- vlookup, hlookup, match
- Text to Columns
- Data Management Best Practices
- Freezing Panes, Filtering, Sorting, Setting Up Tables
Data Cleaning
- Missing Data
- Duplicates
- Recoding Variables
Exploring Preliminary Patterns
- Spark Lines
- Conditional Formatting
Descriptive Statistics
- Measures of Central Tendency
- Dispersion
- Frequencies
Inferential Statistics
Pivot Tables for Near-Instant Analysis
Data Visualization (Optional Module)
Individual Work Time and Consultations

Length

Half-day or full-day. Longer workshops allow for more hands-on practice.

Location

I come to your organization to make participation easy for your staff. Are your staff located throughout multiple offices? We can hold the workshop at the location that’s most central for the majority of your staff, and then include additional staff via webinar. I also hold public workshops–workshops that are open to anyone–in my hometown of Washington, DC and in other cities while I’m traveling.

Ideal Audience

I’ve taught workshops for a variety of for-profits, non-profits, foundations, government agencies, professional societies, and universities. I teach novice data analysts to navigate spreadsheets more confidently and I teach advanced analysts to perform calculations faster than they ever thought was possible.

Workshop Size

I’ve led hands-on workshops with groups ranging from 5 to 50+ attendees. The typical size is 20 to 30 attendees.

What People Are Saying

“Thanks to you, I am feeling more and more confident about my developing Excel skills!”

“Very helpful. Learned about quite a few options within Excel that, honestly, I had no idea about prior to the training.”

“Thank you very much for the great Excel training. I have received overwhelmingly positive feedback and the staff seems very excited to start applying what they learned to their work. We also appreciate your ability to fit so much material into a few hours.”

“I thought you did a really good job handling… the multiple audiences and the range in skill level of the participants. The datasets were also appropriate examples and we could easily understand the data we were working with so that we could focus on the Excel skills… Great job!”

“This was really a great training. I really appreciated being able to work in the data as you were explaining. I hope we can schedule more time with you in the future.”

Webinars

I offer webinars on pivot tables and dashboard automation. Check my event calendar for upcoming public webinars or contact me to discuss a customized private webinar for your team.

Saving Time and Energy with Pivot Tables

Pivot tables are the fastest, easiest way to make sense of spreadsheets. Whether you spend 10% or 100% of your day working with data, pivot tables are a must-have spreadsheet skill. Inthis90-minutewebinar, you’ll learn how to:

design your spreadsheet to be compatible with pivot tables (e.g., prerequisites like contiguous data);
create pivot tables from scratch;
navigate the field list, row headers, column headers, and filters;
run descriptive statistics such as averages and frequencies;
clean data by checking for missing data and duplicates;
make sure your pivot table still works even after you’re updated the raw numbers in your spreadsheet; and
group items like names and dates together so that you can analyze them in aggregate.

We’ll look at several different types of datasets together, like demographic data on people from your organization’s member database and survey responses similar to your organization’s latest consumer satisfaction survey.

Excel Dashboards via Drop-Down Menus

Need to churn out dozens of matching visual reports — one per company, school, program, city, etc — but don’t have the time or energy to copy and paste back and forth a million times between Excel and Word? First, I’ll give you a quick overview of the technique. Next, I’ll build a snapshot from scratch so that you’ll know what to do first, second, and third. You’ll get to keep several Excel templates so that you can try this technique with your own data.

How-To Videos

These tutorials will guide you through the data analysis process. My videos are typically 2 to 5 minutes long, so people tell me they often watch a few videos while they eat lunch. I break everything into small steps. I want you to learn slowly and steadily so that you remember the new strategies forever.