Category: Uncategorized

The purpose of this report is to presents a collection of Tangent Estimates that can be used for the Numerical Differentiation of Tabular Functions. Derived by fitting Conic Segments to three adjacent points on the Tabular Function, these central difference formulas have been reduced to equations expressed in terms of the local secants.

Tangent Estimate Formulas

Secant Identities that simplified the Tangent Estimate Formulas.

Example development of the Tangent Estimate for the X Parabola.

Note: All Equations were typeset using MathPix https://mathpix.com/

I discovered a neat trick that provides a dynamic look ahead to select items from a List

The other day, I spent some time searching via Google to find a simple way to quickly choose items from a list.

I saw several suggested techniques that would provide a look ahead capability for selecting items from an enhanced Drop-Down Box.

I was not satisfied with what I found.

Later, while I was working on my project, I noticed that as I entered a formula into Excel, Excel would then offer a list of suggestions.

That included both functions and Ranges.

I then realized that I could take advantage of this auto-suggestion feature to get the look ahead functionality what I was looking for.

Using a special symbol, I generated a Range Name for each person in the List.

You can use different symbols to manage different lists.

For example, using a collection of Random Names:

The list is referenced in alphabetical order.

Bill Jelen posted a YouTube showing how this technique can be used.

I have explored several special characters that can be used as the first Character for a Range Name.

This collection of characters will enable the development of various lists in a workbook.

A special symbol is entered by using the Number Pad.

Hold Down the Alt Key and then type 0XXX.

As an aside, I use the following code snippet to selectively delete collections of Range Names.

Here are links to the example Workbooks:

Contact me for more information:

alfred.vachris@gmail.com

Here is a Topic Search that identifies various resources for the Power Query

Some are well known, and some are not so well known.

My topic search report begins with a list of search strings which are passed individually to Google Search.

The resulting Google source page is captured and parsed for each search string.

Three sub reports are extracted from the Google source page:

1. Landing page for each discovered URL.
2. Title for each discovered URL.
3. List of Google suggested search terms. Note: Google suggestions are not returned from Google Image searches.

The process begins with the Google “All” search. This search is re-run several times to collect and incorporate new Google search suggestions. Once a fair number of search terms have been processed, the collection of search strings in modified and then processed with the Google Image Search engine. All these uncombined reports are collected to a specific folder. Then the secondary process is executed to aggregate the collection of sub reports.

The five outputs are then collected and posted.

1. List of the search strings
2. List of Google Suggestions
3. Discovered Landing Pages
4. Discovered URLs and Titles
5. Complete Report

List of the search strings

List of Google Suggestions

Landing pages discovered by the Google Searches. Each landing page tabulates the top five search strings that produced the landing page. Scanning this list of landing pages can bring to light new resources. Note that since this is PDF document – each URL is a hyperlink. Some landing page links may not function because I have prefixed “www.” to the landing URL. This prefix may need to be removed. It is also possible that the link may no longer be active.

URLs and Titles –details each discovered URL, giving its title and identifying the search strings that returned the URL. Again, note this is a PDF document hence the URLs are hyperlinks. Double click and your browser will open to the web page.

The workbook that was the source of the other reports is included here in case the user would like to generate focused reports. – note the complete report enables the user to apply the advanced filter capability of Excel to extract detailed results from the report which may contain hundreds of URLs

For more information, please contact me at alfred(dot)vachris(at)gmail(dot)com

Here is an Expanded Topic Search that identifies various resources for working with Excel workbook using Python and Pandas

This report is in response to a current series of questions about how to use Python to work with Excel workbooks.

Some of this resources are well known and some are not so well known.

My topic search report begins with a list of search strings which are passed individually to Google Search.

The resulting Google source page is captured and parsed for each search string.

There are three sub reports that are extracted from the Google source page:

1. Landing page for each discovered URL
2. Title for each discovered URL
3. List of Google suggested search terms

Once the list of search terms has been processed, then a secondary process is executed to aggregate the collection of sub reports that were generated for each of the input search terms.

Collection of URLs – landing pages listed by the number of occurrences for the individual search strings. Scanning this list of landing pages can bring to light new resources. Note that since this is PDF document – each URL is a hyperlink. Some of the links listed in the search string count PDF may not function because I have prefixed “www.” to the landing URL. This prefix may need to be removed.

Collection of Direct URLs – details of each discovered URL, giving its title and identifying the search string that returned the URL. Again, note this is a PDF document hence the URLs are hyperlinks. Double click and your browser will open to the web page.

Collection of Google Suggested Search Terms – note that the reports presented here made use of this feature to expand the original search!

The workbook that was the source of the other reports is included here in case the user would like to generate focused reports.

Working from home is the new normal.

Clearly Cisco Webex is a significant application than can effectively make working from home more productive.

To better understand how and why and when to use Cisco Webex, I ran my topic search process to explore the various aspects of Cisco Webex as well as gathering a collection of resources related to Cisco Webex.

My topic search report begins with a list of search strings which are then passed individually to Google Search.

The resulting Google source page is captured and parsed for each search string.

There are three sub reports that are extracted from the Google source page:

1. Landing page for each discovered URL
2. Title for each discovered URL
3. List of Google suggested search terms

Once the list of search terms has been processed, then a secondary process is executed to aggregate the collection of sub reports that were generated for each of the input search terms.

The composite reports are presented here. Collection of URLs – landing pages listed by the number of occurrences for the individual search strings. Scanning this list of landing pages can bring to light new resources. Note that since this is PDF document – each URL is a hyperlink. Some of the links listed in the search string count PDF may not function because I have prefixed “www.” to the landing URL. This prefix may need to be removed.

Collection of Direct URLs – details of each discovered URL, giving its title and identifying the search string that returned the URL. Again note this is a PDF document hence the URLs are hyperlinks. Double click and your browser will open to the web page.

Collection of Google Suggested Search Terms – note that the reports presented here made use of this feature to expand the original search three times!

The workbook that was the source of the other reports is included here in case the user would like to generate a more focused reports.