Manifesto
Excelling at Excel, one dirty trick at a time
There are a gazillion – yes, literally a gazillion – ways to perform any task in Excel. We all learn the simplest ones in ‘Intro to Excel’ and ‘Spreadsheet Modelling’ courses and dutifully apply them through university and carry them into the workforce. Although the basics are easy to use and explain, they are not often the most efficient way to work in large-scale professional Excel applications.
I currently work with Excel for a range of tasks including top-down market models, financial forecasts, economic models, and an occasional client-facing GUI. In the course of this work, I look for faster and better ways to do things. With each new discovery, I find interesting ways to apply these new capabilities in ways that were unrelated to my initial need.
This site is aimed at people like me – demanding, technically literate Excel users (falling somewhat short of full-fledged developers); impatient, but inquisitive, students; and mathimagical data hooligans – looking for powerful ways to break the mould model in their day-to-day Excel shenanigans and make their workflow more efficient and flexible.
This site is one part Excel reference and two parts style guide, served with a side of senseless banter, shameless puns, pithy witticisms, and a virtual forest of buttons that launch modal pop-up boxes containing profound digressions about technical minutiae. Did I mention the run-on sentences?
Philosophy
Breaking the Model is founded on three core principles:
idiot-proofing, agility, and efficiency
Idiot-Proofing
All spreadsheet monkeys have baboon-inspired moments. By channeling our inner orangutan during the design phase, we can minimize spreadsheet risk, ensure data integrity, and reduce the risk of reporting errors. Also, we may not be the only humble primates operating our models – a model that runs on autopilot is much less likely to succumb to pilot error.
Agility
Specifications change. A model isn’t complete until it yields to every change request in the pipeline. It can, however, be designed to accommodate revisions with a minimal demand on billable hours. Never hardcode what you assume to be a constant, and always set up multistage calculations so that central inputs can be quickly and reliably replaced without reengineering the entire system.
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Efficiency
Excel has lots of specialized formulas and functions, each of which requires specific syntax. Other features can only be edited through awkward dialog boxes. Breaking the Model advocates the use of systematic logic (broad structures that can be applied to many different applications), and transferable syntax (choosing formulas that create more opportunities to copy and paste).
Behind the Curtain
spreadsheet monkey, coffee lover,
jazz pianist, symphonist, visionary
Greg McClary is an analyst at a consulting firm. When he’s not untangling webs of gridlines, Greg spends too much of his time formatting and proofing the >1,000 pages of music associated with his symphony. He is also polishing the art of accompanying solo piano improvisation with tumbao basslines on his favourite household appliance, the glorious Yamaha CP-70B.
