KeyCuts

03/26/2025

Dear Analyst ep # 134: Film data analyst Stephen Follows talks about how he analyzed every single Oscar speech to see if Harvey Weinstein was mentioned more than God using Excel and AI. First time I've talked with someone who is actively using AI with Excel to clean data!

Stephen Follows is a film data analyst and he shares an Oscars project where he analyzed speeches to see how often God and Harvey Weinstein are mentioned.

12/02/2024

Dear Analyst ep. #133: Back to doing a solo tutorial: How to check if a cell contains text from a list of values. In the formula gets complicated since it involves array formulas. I walk through 3 methods in this episode

There are times when a problem nags at you like a pebble in your shoe. Even when you’re not working on the problem itself, you’re thinking about the problem which make it even worse. Rarely do I come across a Google Sheets/Excel task I cannot solve with formulas, but this one evaded my extensive...

04/15/2024

Dear Analyst ep. #126: Executive director of the Data Visualization Society Amanda Makulec talks about data storytelling. She talks about creating COVID charts with Johns Hopkins and what questions to ask when creating a data viz. https://ow.ly/NoNl50Rg63N

Data storytelling helps convey a few fact about a dataset. Amanda Makulec talks about her career in data storytelling and data visualization.

03/25/2024

Dear Analyst #125: How to use Spotify API data to find the most underrated Taylor Swift song with Andrew Firriolo, senior data analyst at BuzzFeed. We discuss his methodology and the feedback he received from Swifties https://www.thekeycuts.com/dear-analyst-125-how-to-identify-taylor-swifts-most-underrated-songs-using-data-with-andrew-firriolo/

02/05/2024

Training individuals at large companies on how to learn Excel and analytics tools varies by team. Alex Kolokolov discusses consulting with large companies and how company politics plays a role in deciding which analytics solutions get deployed.

Alex Kolokolov discusses analytics solutions at large companies and how company politics influences these solutions. Also discusses improving line chart visualizations.

01/15/2024

Dear Analyst ep. #123: Ben Wylie discusses how he got into data journalism, what makes a stunning data visualization, and some interesting visualizations he's built using NBA and rugby data.

Ben Wylie discusses how he analyzed sports data in his free time to create compelling data stories and data visualizations.

12/05/2023

Dear Analyst ep. #122: In 2016, Uber China competed with DiDi on signing up new drivers, and at the center of it all was an online version of Excel Matt Basta created to calculate driver incentives. We also discuss working on IBM's TM1 FP&A platform.

There are only so many ways to make Excel “fun.” If you’ve been following this blog/podcast, stories about the financial modeling competition and spreadsheet errors that lead to catastrophic financial loss are stories that make a 1980s tool somewhat interesting to read and listen to. There are...

10/23/2023

Dear Analyst ep #121: Behavioral scientist Dan Ariely fabricated survey data for one of his famous experiments in Predictably Irrational. This episode highlights a blog post from Data Colada by Uri SImonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joe Simmons highlighting the irregularities in the data.

Dan Ariely allegedly fabricated data in his famous experiment on honesty declarations for an auto insurance company.

07/03/2023

Dear Analyst #118: Learn about the experiments at Facebook / Meta and how the data science uses analytics best practices to drive long term user value. Akos Lada is the Director of Data Science for Feed Ranking & Recommendations and he shares all about data science at Facebook.

No, this isn’t an episode about how Facebook’s algorithm and feed works. The data science function is popping up in companies small and large given the amount of data swimming around. No other company understand the power and influence that data science can have on the customer experience than F...

05/24/2023

Dear Analyst ep. #117: New 2023 Google Sheets functions for transforming & cleaning data. Also discuss The Defiant podcast with Synthetix founder Kain Warwick on treating crypto like an addiction and The Forward Thinking CFO ep. #8 with Brian Jones, former Head of Product at Excel on how Excel is better than verticalized software

Learn how to use new 2023 Google Sheets functions for transforming your data.

03/27/2023

Dear Analyst ep. #116: Breaking down Microsoft's Copilot for Excel demo from a few weeks ago and whether it will replace us human data analysts. Also discuss the People Make Games video where Chris Bratt and Quintin Smith talk about the origins of the Financial Modeling World Cup and try to solve one of the questions from the competition.

Microsoft demoed how Copilot for Excel can do simple analyses. This is a breakdown of Copilot's features for Excel.

01/17/2023

Dear Analyst ep #114: How a small real estate company uses modern data and cloud tools just like the big enterprises. Doug Walters from Elite Development Group discusses how they started with Google Sheets and moved to using tools like Fivetran, dbt, AWS, Sisense, and more:

Small companies can use modern data tools to help make data-driven decisions. Elite Development is a real estate company doing just that.