Life-long Learner

4 Courses in Excel Skills for Business Specialization on COURSERA

I have decided to take a course on Coursera to master Microsoft Excel. NGL, I think Excel is very powerful. And if I have to compare the amount of knowledge that I learned from theses 4 courses to that of Word Expert’s that I had many years ago, I think they are somewhat similar.

Some fun and useful information and skills that I have learned so far:

  • You can turn an Excel spreadsheet into a painting canvas, just like how Tatsuo Horiuchi, an 80-year-old artist does with his PC.
  • If you want to move across, press Tab; move down, press Enter.
  • You can also insert mini graphs that fits into a single cell to show overall trends using the Sparkline feature.
  • Printing on Excel really isn’t that hard with Page Breaks, Margin and Print Preview.
  • The Find & Select tool is pretty powerful. It allows me to select special things like: errored cells, cells with formulas, objects. That way, I don’t have to worry about missing a cell or losing my previous selections when I accidentally do something dumb.
  • Excel can also save me from the hard job of aligning objects with the Distribute Horizontally/Vertically features in Align function.
  • To copy the format of one cell to multiple ones, I need to double-click on Format Painter tool.
  • When doing data prep, I should
    • Use formulas, such as SUBSTITUTE, CLEAN, TRIM… to clean up the cells, then Paste as Values to remove the formulas.
    • Put data into Tables.
  • VLOOKUP is only 1 function from the Lookup Family. Other ones, like INDEX, CHOOSE, MATCH, OFFSET… are more versatile when searching up and referring to specific values in a range/table.

Some helpful shortcuts:

  • Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn Move between sheets
  • Alt+Enter Add a new line within cell
  • Fn+F3 See all named ranges/table…
  • Fn+F4 Locking cell reference

Full-stack Programming Foundation Course at TechMaster, VN

I took this course while doing online classes with Villanova. I thought it was a fun way to interact with people offline while learning a new area of knowledge. However, when the COVID situation got worse and everything was moved online, so even that plus became a huge minus. My eyes were so sore from doing these coding homework and end-of-term essays. Still, it was a rewarding experience to know about:

  • HTML, CSS
    • I learned how to use GitHub, setting up a website from scratch, and laying out elements on the website. My favorite tools to practice were CSS Diner and Flexbox Froggy.
    • I cloned Facebook’s signup window and a lottery website. I was also cloning a shoe website, but half-way through the project, the website updated and changed its entire display :/.
  • JavaScript, JavaScript DOM: I created websites to practice typing, a memory game, and a to-do list. I had so much fun practicing the basics on
  • Python: Everyone says Python is the easiest programming language, but tbh, I’m still so scared of it. That means more Python courses coming up for me.
  • Database Management and SQL: SQL was fairly manageable, especially with the help of HackerRank

PowerBI Level 1 with MCI Academy

Having realized my love for Tableau, I decided to test my faithfulness by taking a course on PowerBI – one of Tableau’s rivals. However, on day 1, my PowerBI instructor said that those softwares aren’t competing against each other, as they are used by different groups of user. Tableau – Data scientists, PowerBI – Business analysts. Oh well, at least a myth was debunked.

I had lots of fun learning how to handle and visualize data with PowerBI, which IMO, was similar to PowerPoint at some points. In the end, I created this dashboard. I have to conclude that Tableau is still unbeatable though.

Blockchain A-Z on UDEMY

  • Bitcoin is a distributed, programmable ledger that uses consensus protocol.
  • When I invest in Cryptocurrency, I can invest in the protocol of blockchain (All types of coins, the most famous one is Bitcoin) or the idea behind what they are building (Tokens)
  • The 3 important layers in the crypto world: [1] Technology, [2] Protocol/Coin, [3] Token
  • Bitcoin was invented in 2008 by Invented in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto (nobody really knows if that’s a person/organization/company…)

Business Metrics and Financial Markets on COURSERA

In Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad, financial literacy is one of the must-haves. These 2 courses, taught by professors from Duke and Université De Genève, were great additions to my Financial Accounting course and Bloomberg Market Concepts.

I’m always curious to learn more and know more.


Trang (Tee) Thao Nguyen