Minitab, Matlab or Excel?

After discovering the beauties of MATLAB during sophomore year of college, I never once looked back at Excel. Managing data was so much simpler, graphing was effortless, I simply couldn't see a reason to use Excel again (with the exception of one sad night involving three engineers and several forlorn attempts to graph a flat line in Matlab). The ability to write scripts allowed you to get exactly the information you needed saved you time by only calculating the values needed (whereas Excel recalculates the entire sheet every time you update a value). During grad school, a friend described Matlab as "Excel for people who know how to do math" and I scoffingly agreed and from then on described it as "Excel for Engineers".

My feelings toward Excel began to change after taking a statistics class, during which the lack of Statistica or Matlab on my new computer made me resort to Excel for data crunching. During that semester, I discovered that Excel had countless built-in functions and shortcuts I never knew of, thus making it a very capable data analysis software as well. A roommate told me that Microsoft engineers are constantly hounded by requests for features that have been in Excel for years, so I guess Excel's main shortcoming is that none of those features are intuitive or easy to access. My respect for Excel further increased after starting work in July, when I discovered the beauty and power of Excel Macros (and their tie-in with Visual Basic, the first "programming" language I learned in middle school), which allow the automation of repetitive tasks similar to Matlab's scripts. Alright, I thought, I misjudged you Excel, clearly you have power. But the amount of CPU and processing time it took to get through large amounts of data still peeved me.

And then I met Minitab. If Matlab was Excel for Engineers, then Minitab is Excel for Statisticians. True to its tagline of "Software for Six Sigma and Quality Improvement", the program is a lean, mean graphing machine. With hardly a blimp on your CPU, Minitab can spit out multiple, detailed and informative graphs in a matter of seconds, ranging from simple time-series plotting to two-sample t-tests, control charts, box-whisker plots to at least 50 other chart types I have yet to discover how to use. Graphs are easy to modify/label without the endless clicking and adjusting of Excel, entire projects can be saved together, and again, the software somehow manages all this without eating up your RAM. To be fair, I will admit that while it is a graphing beast, Minitab falls leagues behind Excel in sorting data (Excel's "Auto Filter" feature is by far the most useful, time-saving feature I have discovered).

So, while I used to say Minitab > Matlab > Excel, I now think each has its niche. If you're looking to graph simple one-line charts, I'd use Excel. If you plan on creating data with complex equations (i.e. third or fourth degree polynomials or solving differential equations), or vice versa, I suggest Matlab. Finally, if you plan on getting any statistical data aside from the mean and standard deviation, I think it is well worth your while to spend an hour learning Minitab.

:-)

Welcome to the Working World

After two months of blissful free time on the east and west coasts, I have finally shed my responsibility-free college student skin and emerged with a fresh, clean corporate casing. I've been getting many questions about how work is, so I figured this means was best to avoid repeating myself. Also, I'm curious to see how my opinion changes as time progresses, so here it is, my digest after one week of work:

The Good:
1. The people! So far, I've really liked most of the people I'm working with, and my floor, along with the whole campus (of ~10,000 employees) is incredibly social. The amazing tradition that made my day: On my second day, my "buddy" or trainer brings in a box of donuts, leaves them on my desk, and sends out an email to my entire floor telling them to come meet me and grab a donut. It was great, I had people stopping by all day to introduce themselves and I got a great sense of who does what and where I fall in the big picture. Also, while walking around campus, people greet complete strangers all the time with simple "hellos" and "good mornings". This is a stark contrast from most research facilities. This lack of social barriers environment is my kind of place, where you can (and I did) meet new people simply walking back from lunch.

2. The work! The reason I was most excited about this position, and still am, is that it's real engineering. On my first day I sat in on a meeting with my team, and it was four people with laptops, sitting around a table and problem-solving. This casual brain-trust method of trouble-shooting is all too familiar from countless group projects in school, and it is my favorite aspect of engineering. Also, it seems like my position has a good balance of time spent on the computer, on the floor, and in the lab, which is perfect.

3. The routine! I'm a person who loves routine, and although I'm guaranteed to get tired of it, for now I like having a regular pattern to my life. It's especially nice after 8 weeks of sleeping in and not using my brain at all.

4. The clothes! After years of seeing awesome dress clothes in shops, I finally have a reason to wear them, and I couldn't be more excited. I've always hated how restricting and hot jeans are, and finally I don't need to wear them anymore, dress pants kick ass. And as superficial as it is, I feel powerful wearing them. Except the shoes, I've yet to find a comfortable pair of clack-clack-free heels, but I'm working on it.

5. Being one of the biggest Merck sites, we have lots of awesome club activities...a team for basically any sport you could want to play (including softball, which I'm getting back into!), and a great way to meet your coworkers.

6. Summer hours! I almost forgot...we have this amazing schedule where you put in an extra hour each day from M-Th, and go home at lunch on Friday! Its great because it gives me time to come home, gym, nap and then go out like college days.

The Bad:
1. The biggest, and only con so far, is the commute. I love my new place and wouldn't even consider living outside of the city, but that means I pay the price with a 1-hour train ride every morning. However, I am making the most of it- I've subscribed to the NY Times (yes, the hard copy, I'm old fashioned), and read that every morning, and do the crosswords on the ride home!

The Interesting:
1. While this isn't good or bad, it's definitely worth mentioning: there are lots of young, married people. Either I'm really bad at judging age, but for the most part people my age or a couple of years older were all married, something that struck me as odd. For all you working kids, is this trend specific to industry or company, or is it some general corporate feature?

Anywho, that's my work, one week in. I really hope the excitement keeps up and the 6 am wake ups don't ebb away at my vivactiy. Also, this website is due for yet another name change. Suggestions?

Peace, love and the working world!

Kiran