The University of California’s branches in Berkeley and Los Angeles have been known to lead the rankings in academic and athletic excellence. But the schools’ top spots on the FBI’s 2008 “Crime in the U.S.” report are something the Golden State may not be so proud of.

The recently released CIUS report lists UCLA as having the highest number of violent crimes for the year 2008, with 58, while UC Berkeley is a not-too-distant second with 46 violent crimes for the year. Violent crimes included in the data are murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

The two California schools also led in violent crimes per capita among large schools—those ranked among the top 100 nationwide for student enrollment. The schools (both of which have student populations in the mid-30,000s) had about 15 and 13 violent crimes per 10,000 students, respectively.

But those numbers don’t tell the entire story, said Jonathan Kassa, executive director for the nonprofit Security On Campus Inc.

“You really want to go beyond the statistics. Statistics are the beginning and the end, but [they’re] only the tip of the iceberg of the comprehensive policy and process,” Kassa said.

In many cases, Kassa said, higher numbers simply mean schools are getting better at reporting existing statistics. “You’ll have very low numbers that don’t necessarily reflect what the research has shown compared with schools that actually have a higher [number of reported crimes]—we like to tell students and parents that [the higher number] may indeed be a safer school.”

What’s equally important, he added, was to look at whether the school had a comprehensive policy for addressing security issues, both on and off campus. Kassa said one of the people leading the way in campus security issues was Eugene Zdziarski, vice president for student affairs at Roanoke College in Salem, Va.

Zdziarski’s longstanding interest in security issues was put to the test in 1999. As the associate director for student life at Texas A&M University, he was in charge of coordinating the emergency response when a bonfire collapsed, killing 12 students.

“For me it’s always been an area of keen interest,” he said. But “certainly that experience solidified for me my priority in making [security coordination] a strong role as a college administrator.”

Zdziarski later became dean of students at the University of Florida, where he worked closely with local law enforcement on security issues, Klasso said. “When you get dean at that level embracing … public safety, you’re really going to get somewhere.”

Though the campus at Roanoke College, where Zdziarski moved in September 2008, is considerably smaller than his previous schools, he has begun to put in place a new crisis management plan at the school that includes added training for crisis responders, a card system for accessing buildings and emergency telephones with flashing blue lights.

“These are long term goals—particularly in this economy the money’s not there to do it all at once, but if you identify a problem, it can be accomplished,” Zdziarski said.

The FBI crime statistics for 2008 did not include Roanoke College.

One thing that has had a profound impact on his efforts is the April 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, a mere 40 miles from Roanoke College. The tragedy has helped raise people’s awareness of security issues, both in Virginia and on a nationwide level.

“It’s unfortunate, but oftentimes the resources, the time, the attention to it aren’t really available till something happens,” Zdziarski said.

Corp. James Deford, a community policing officer and crime prevention specialist at Virginia Commonwealth University, said other states looked to Virginia to lead the way following the Virginia Tech events. “Unfortunately, because of what happened in our state, we’ve become a leader in prevention.”

VCU ranked sixth among the country’s 100 largest schools for its violent crime rate. The school, with 31,700 students in 2008, reported about seven crimes per 10,000 students. However, six smaller schools in Virginia had higher violent crime rates.

In addition to implementing a text-messaging alert system, adding more campus alert boxes and beefing up rapid response since the Virginia Tech shootings, the school has emphasized its efforts to curb crime through prevention. This includes putting plain-clothes officers out to appear as victims and, in cases of larceny, using personal items as bait.

“We’re doing a lot more to be out there first,” Deford said.

But there are simple things students could also do to help ensure their safety on and around campus. “The biggest thing we push is self-awareness, to be aware of what’s going on around you and what type of environment you’re in,” Deford said.

“When you’re walking down street you don’t want to have your head down texting or have both earbuds in—make people aware that you’re paying attention to them as well so it makes you less of a target.”

Now you have all the component costs, labor costs, capital costs and indirect costs (non-direct labor and consumables). This provides the cost accounting group with everything they need to produce a simple financial model that will give you a high level picture of the project. It is not the final analysis, but the first analysis that will tell you whether you should look deeper or not.  If the analysis looks favorable you will look deeper, if you will look elsewhere for savings.

The financial models we have used are a set of nested spreadsheets. Below is a gross oversimplification of a typical analysis, but demonstrate the principle.

Compound(or formula) cost spreadsheet. The compounding operation takes 2 laborers so you spread those costs across the total product of compound. For example you will produce 1MM kg of compounds with 2 laborers( $100K) so the labor costs are $0.10/kg. This spreadsheet feeds to SKU spreadsheet. Cost accounting should also add anyother know variable overhead.

SKU spreadsheet includes amount of compound needed per SKU, the package and closure, carton, pallet, etc. The remaining 4 laborer cost are spread over the unit volume as appropriate for each package type/size. The $50K  is consumables is spread appropriately where it belongs. Every piece that going into the product as a palletized, shrinkwrapped pallet in your warehouse. Again,variable overhead should also be added.You now have a total unit cost to compare to your out-sourced, or purchased complete cost. This will feed the spreadsheet that will generate the cost saving for that particular SKU.

You have a total cost for the SKU both in-sourced and out-sourced and know the volume of that SKU. This generates a savings number for that SKU. You do this for two compounds (formula) and 6 different SKUs of two different package type.  Package type A is 7% cheaper to produce in-house, and package type B is 10% cheaper to produce in-house. This feed the spreadsheet for the entire product line.

This is where the assumed proportionality is used.You sell $5MM of package type A and $5MM of package type B  for a savings of  $350K and $500K respectively for a total on $850K annual savings.

The next part vary depending on how your finance group handles thing, but in general a 2 year or less payback is consider acceptable.  So we have $850K savings and $850K capital for a 1 year payback. If it is looked at on an after tax basis and you are in a 50% tax bracket( if there is such a thing), you would have a two year payback.

Looks like any interesting project- requires a more in-depth analysis. This analysis should be able to be completed by an experienced and committed group in 1-2 months. The assumed proportionality takes a huge amount of time and detail out of the process. It is also where the anal retentive will have the most difficulty.The purpose of this analysis is not to provide the last analysis, but a quick and reliable way to get a big picture view of a project.

How detailed the final analysis will be up to the you.

At this point, you will invariably have some SKUs that didn’t fit into the model.  Different package type that you will not be capable of filling, or compound (formula) of such low volume that you will not be making them. The next part will try to deal with what is left.

There have been a number of cool advances in my gym routine over the past year, and they all revolve around the iPhone.

The iPhone itself is an incredible gym tool on its own, because it comes with a built-in iPod, stopwatch, and basic timer.

Add in the awesome power of the App Store and the plethora of gym-specific Apps that you can install, most of which are free, and you have yerself a very powerful tool to make your workouts more efficient and intelligent.

In fact, I have a few ideas for an iPhone gym/workout application that I need to start working on. It would be tailored to the way I like to work in the gym, but if you use any of the techniques I’ll talk about on this blog, it’ll work for you too.

But I digress. What I want to focus on here is the ability of the iPhone (and select other smartphones) to access and edit Google Spreadsheets, part of the Google Documents suite of webapps. This is a relatively recent development and not too many people know about it, but it dramatically increases the power of the iPhone as your workout’s data center.

I plan and track my workouts using Google Spreadsheets. You can take a look at my own, personal workout planner here. The breakthrough here is when you use the iPhone to actively edit and notate your workouts – I often update it after each individual set.

For someone like me who tends to forget my rep count by the time I get to the water fountain, this is a godsend.

Try it on your own smartphone and tell me this isn’t a killer new way to plan and track your workouts.

originally posted Jul 10, 2009 11:01 AM‎‎

This was a simple assignment we had to do as an introduction to Microsoft Excel. it does not dive deep into the topic but was meant as an introduction to help introduce some of the features of the program. As soon as its been graded i will post a more recent exec document that is a better representation of my skill level with regards to Microsoft Excel.

View The  Pdf version Here

One of my mates who was a keen alpine climber used to say ‘There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad preparation’.

I think that is very true, better kit, checking the forecast, local knowledge, exit strategy all these things can ensure you can cope with virtually all weather scenarios.

Could we say the same thing for spreadsheets?

There is no such thing as a bad spreadsheet, just bad processes. (or should that be bad management?)

I think bad spreadsheets often appear to fill the gaps between what enterprise systems deliver and what users feel they need to do their job.

I totally belive some spreadsheets have a valid place in an enterprises information systems. I’m not for one second suggesting that all spreadsheets are bad, or that all should be removed or replaced. Although I know lots of people do seem locked onto that idea.

I do think some of the worst I have seen could have and should have been replaced by a more appropriate technology and management process. I also think a lot of the thinking focuses on a single symptom (bad spreadsheets) rather than the root cause (IT systems expectation gap?).

What do you think?

cheers

Simon

In production code, or code that might be delivered to a customer I try and adopt an enlightened pro developer style of coding. I.e. I only do stuff that I think adds value.

In personal project coding I have several alternate styles. By habit I normally code in the style of Father Ted (sub style – Father Jack Hackett). Which dictates the first procedure is called ‘feck’ and the second is called ‘Arse’ (by LAW!). The traditional ‘Hello World’ becomes (somewhat obviously) ‘Feck Off’. Yes/No dialogs become ‘Ah go on, go on now’

My most recent project (indexing the codematic site) I coded in the style of Bodie and Namond (inspired by his explanation of the game of chess) from the Wire. So the first routine is ‘FindDemBitches’ quickly followed by ‘DeleteDemMuthas’. Which contained the immortal line

Dim DatLiddleBitch as Range

What coding styles so you use? And do you do an edit replace as soon as that ‘personal code’ finds its way into production? Or perhaps before??

(I remember one time a user contacting my to ask why they had just had a error message that said ‘Guess again, donkey’.)

cheers

Simon

I’ve tinkered, edited and updated and got to the point where I think ZAP! is ready for general consumption.

What this probably means is that I’ll immediately start finding glaring errors and blatant omissions, but such is life.

ZAP! is an elemental DPS spreadsheet designed to help you make choices about your character’s gear, talent and glyph choice, buff dependency, spell rotation and so forth.  It also features a sandbox rotation editor in which you can play around with different methods for doing DPS, or construct spell rotations to deal with specific circumstances and then evaluate their effectiveness.

You can find a user’s guide here.

You can download ZAP! from one of these links:

Download ZAP!

Download ZAP! compatibility version

Remember to use the compatibility version only if the normal one doesn’t work for you.

As usual, feedback and (heaven forbid) bug reports are welcomed.

You have learned how to create Macros in Microsoft Word from the previous post, now is the time to learn how to create a macro in Microsoft Excel.  If you understand the process in Word, it is almost the same process in Excel.

Most people do not understand how easy it is to create a macro and how useful it is to improve the speed of your office functions.  It is important to fix your macro button on the Quick Access toolbar for easy access.  You may create different macros for different tasks, especially the ones you perform regularly. 

Please enjoy and pass it on: to your family, friends, and your office co-workers.  Who knows, one day, someone will remember you as the shinning light on how to create a macro.

This tutorial was taken from the best-seller Using Excel with High Speed 2007 Edition, or Using Excel with High Speed 2003.

Let’s get started, please click Excel Macro, and be sure to click the Back button, top left of the pdf to return to this page.

We’re looking for members and writers, please leave us a comment with your e-mail address.

Please bookmark or add to favorites for easy access.

I’ve uploaded RC2 of ZAP! with some minor changes:

• I’m now uploading a “legacy” version that should be more compatible with OpenOffice etc.  I can’t verify that it works perfectly but it seems OK.  Unfortunately it reduces all the shades-of-blue cell backgrounds to one shade, which makes it look a bit rubbish.
• Some tidy-ups on the UI front.
• Changed the layout of the Sandbox editor and added the ability for the user to define durations/cooldowns, as well as an area for writing notes and a summary of how many of each spell was cast.

Still to-do:

• Might add a few more statistics displays to the Sandbox.
• Need to write instructions and stuff and put them up here on the ‘blog.
• The trinket-sorting macro doesn’t work in OpenOffice for the compatibility version.  I probably won’t try to fix this as I’m not exactly Mr. Macros.

Huge thanks to everyone who’s tried it so far and for the feedback!

Download links

(5/11: Updated to RC3)

ZAP rc3

ZAP rc3 compatibility version

As proof that you can do pretty much anything if you’re bored enough and have enough time, I’ve finished the first release candidate for my spreadsheet project.

It’s called ZAP! - Zamir’s Elemental Spreadsheet!

Yes I’m fond of being glib, especially if the opportunity arises during something that sounds like it should be serious (like say, writing a spreadsheet).

What is ZAP!?

ZAP! is an Excel 2007 spreadsheet which you plug your stats and talents and buffs and such into, and it returns a DPS figure.  That is to say, it reduces elemental shaman DPS to a formula for the purposes of helping a player explore how different factors might affect their damage output.  The design is heavily based on Binkenstein’s SEIC spreadsheet, but it is an entirely new project written from scratch using my own methods and formulae.

It also features a “Sandbox” rotation editor, which allows a user to play around with configuring their own spell cast sequence while adding/removing stats to compare DPS results.

Who’s Zamir?

Zamir is one of my various Internet aliases.  It has the advantage of starting with a ‘Z’, which makes it inherently cool.

Hey this looks a lot like SEIC

Yeeees it does.  That’s because I was a long-time user of SEIC and loved the simple, one-sheet UI design compared to the complex designs of other classes’ spreadsheets.  ZAP! is meant to seem familiar and obvious to any previous SEIC users, but I also tried to design the front page from the ground up to be intuitive and user-friendly.  I may or may not have succeeded.

Seriously though did you just copy/paste from SEIC

OK seriously who are you?  Oh wait it’s me.  OK then.  Well, no.  This spreadsheet is entirely, completely my own work.  I manually typed every formula into every cell based on my own understanding of the maths.  This involved a lot of research and checking and in-game testing.

Having said that, one of the most helpful tools available to me while designing ZAP! was SEIC, because I could check every result my work gave against SEIC’s results.  Frequently this allowed me to quickly track down mistakes or omissions in my own work; sometimes it meant spotting mistakes in SEIC.  So yeah, SEIC was an incredibly valuable resource.  And like I said, it’s the spreadsheet I’ve personally used until now and it deserves a lot of respect and recognition.

What can ZAP! do?

The main feature of ZAP! is returning a DPS figure based on:

• Your character’s stats, talents, glyphs and set bonuses
• Your personal and raid buffs, debuffs and consumables
• Encounter variables such as fight time, heroism use, etc.

It also provides some interesting stats like how many spells you cast and how much mana you used.

ZAP! also features a DEP system where each stat, glyph, set bonus etc. is converted into damage equivalency points – that is, how much DPS they theoretically translate into.  Like SEIC, there’s a tool to compare items/gems/enchants etc based on their DEP, as well as a trinket list which can be sorted according to each trinket’s DEP.

The final feature of ZAP! is the Sandbox rotation editor, which was actually the main reason I started this in the first place.  It’s very similar in style to the pseudo-simulation that SEIC used to calculate DPS, only the user selects which spells to cast and when, any stat buffs to add/remove, and how long the cycle goes on for.

Ultimately, ZAP! is a formulator.  That is distinct from a simulator.  It uses average values, expected results, normalised scenarios, and so forth.  The value it returns is to help you make a choice between one item or another, or between one rotation style and another, and is not a “target” or “maximum”.

OK so what now

I need some folks to try ZAP! and play around with it to check it works properly and make suggestions/give feedback where helpful so that I can improve it and possibly release it to a wider audience.  You can download it here.  Update: there’s also a compatibility version here.

It’s in Excel 2007 format and I’ve no idea to what extent this is or isn’t compatible with other spreadsheet packages, sorry.

Also, it’s a macro-enabled spreadsheet as it uses a macro to sort trinkets by DEP – opening it without enabling macros will not affect the functionality of the rest of the spreadsheet.

Eusprig – The European Spreadsheet Interest Group has had a website face lift.

It marks a massive improvement, not just in the look, but also the content, and more importantly the image of the organisation.

I had pretty much stopped linking to the old site as it did not show the organisation in the sort of professional light that I think is appropriate.

A proper website update was one of the key things I pushed for whilst I was on the Eusprig committee. I am not on it now, but I am pleased to see the website bloom.

Indeed I had pretty much given up on Eusprig, I didn’t bother going to the conference this year, having been for the previous 4 years and spoken twice – err thrice, (maybe I’ve attended 5 years?).

The topic for the 2010 conference is finally the one I think we need to get to. OK we know errors are in spreadsheets, but finally there will be a conference looking at real world solutions to this very real issue. I may even submit a paper for consideration.

Will you? (its a bit of an odd ‘pay to present’ set up, which is largely (and rightly) discredited as overly salesy, but Eusprig try to manage that through the review process).

What do you think of the new site?

Will you be attending the 2010 conf in London in July to discuss reducing and managing errors in spreadsheets?

I sometimes get the feeling that the world has moved on from spreadsheet quality, but XLAnalyst is still one of the most downloaded apps from codematic. Have you moved on, or is it still very much on your agenda?

cheers

Simon

Produce airfoil sections without specialist software.

First decide on the airfoil section you want to use. Because I mostly design and build PSS aircraft I make use of articles posted at http://www.pssaonline.co.uk/

For this exercise I will choose the Selig airfoil S3021.

Go to http://www.ae.uiuc.edu/m-selig/index.html follow links to a file containing the coordinates for the S3021 section name S3021.dat. Clicking on this file name automatically downloads the coordinates into a text file on my computer. Open a new Excel spreadsheet. Choose “Data” from toolbar, then “Import External Data”, find your file s3021.dat. In “Text Import Wizard” select Fixed Width option and defaults for next screens. s3021.dat is now converted into a two column spreadsheet in column A and column B. Delete any rows that contain description (ie the top row). For safety, save the spreadsheet as s3021.xls but do not close it.

From the plans of your model determine the width of the wing at your required chord location. Let us say this is 250mm. Enter 250 into location F1 of your spreadsheet. Select cell C1 and enter the formula =(A1*$F$1), select D1 and enter formula =(B1*$F$1). C1 and D1 should now show the result of this calculation. Select C1 and copy (under Edit option), then select C2 and the rest of this column by dragging the mouse. With this column selected click paste (under Edit option). The whole of column C should contain the result of multiplying the column A value by F1. Repeat the process for column D.

Now to plot the airfoil section.

Select columns C and D (both columns highlighted). From menu select “Insert” and then “Chart”. The wizard should appear. Select XY(Scatter) chart type and chart sub-type “data points connected by smooth lines without markers”. Hit Next and you’ll see a picture of the foil section. It’s no good, the X and Y axis need transposing. Click on the “Series” tab and on the lines where you see C change to D and change D to C. Hit Next and the section is drawn up the page. Hit Next and you are asked if you want to save as new sheet. Choose this option. Hit Finish. Great, but will it fly. I doubt it.

Now the tidying and the trial and error bit.

Make sure you are on the chart page. Select “File” and  “Page Setup”. Set page to Portrait (not Landscape). Make top and bottom margins as small as you can get away with (0.3 worked for me) and make Header and Footer zero. Right click in the Plot area and choose “Format Plot Area”. In the “Border” box choose automatic and in the “Area” box choose None. Click OK.

Right click the Y-Axis (the vertical one in the middle) and choose “Format Axis”. Pick “Scale” tab, un-click Auto minimum and set the value to zero. Click OK.

Now the trial and error bit.

Unfortunately I don’t know if it is possible to define an absolute measured grid on the page in Excel so I use the “Print and Pull” method. Click the Plot area to display the sizing handles. Pull in the right hand side until the airfoil looks about the right shape and then print it. Check the actual measurements with reference to columns C and D. Pull and squeeze and print again. Save it when you get it right.

To produce a section with a different chord, simply change the value in F1 and repeat.

The paper section will be glued onto the template material to be used in the Hot wire wing cutter.