Figuring things out

This was something I wrote up for my students this week, thus the references to assignment 1 and exercises, but I think it useful things to keep in mind even once you're out of school.

One of the things I’m hoping that you learn of out Assignment 1 is how to figure things out. As you’re going through the assignment, I’m not expecting that you’ll know exactly what needs to be done at every point. And getting it done is not about memorizing how all the different functions work.

A quick sidetrack…The most useful people you can hire are people who can figure things out. This is explicitly what I look for when I’m hiring. If you can’t figure things out, I need to tell you what buttons to press and when. If you can figure things out, I can give you guidelines and you work on the tasks, asking questions if required for clarification.

Identify similar stuff and use the pattern

In the exercises, you’ve seen how to complete a whole bunch of tasks. You’ve seen things with VLOOKUP and variations with exact match and approximate match. When you see a problem in the assignment, you should be thinking:

What did I do in the exercises that was like this?

Was it an exact match or approximate match?

For example, if you see a range of numbers that you need to do a VLOOKUP table for, you don’t need to know it off the top of your head for the assignment. In Exercise 3 we did VLOOKUP for grades, that also has ranges of number. Look back and copy the pattern. That’s not cheating or not knowing it well enough, that’s just smart work.

Troubleshoot by simplifying

If you have a long formula with multiple functions, it’s hard to figure out how to fix it when it’s not working. Break it down into smaller parts. For example, when you do index and match, during your testing, put the match portion in a cell of it’s own to identify what value is being returned. Is it the value you expect? If not, what could be the reason? Now you only troubleshooting the match function and not a monster formula with index and match combined.

Refer to documentation to find new variations or examples

In the exercises, you did IF statements based on conditions comparing numbers. Is there a place it would be useful to do an IF that checks the value of text. Not sure how to do that, check the documentation. One place to look is an internet search, but the references section in the exercises gives some links to look at.

Slow down and read

Seriously, slow down and read. Everyone has the urge to skim and get through text as quickly as possible. Being 5 seconds faster to read doesn’t help you or anyone else. In our assignment, you’d probably be best served by reading an entire case and considering it before starting. They’re not step-by-step instructions. Skimming generally means you miss the big picture and make assumptions that are not valid. This actually makes it harder for you in the long run.