© Keith Vander Linden, 2000

“All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death, no nearer to God.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. [98]T. S. Eliot, Choruses From ‘The Rock’, Selected Poems

(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), p. 107.

© Keith Vander Linden, 2000

List and Data Management

• Recall the data hierarchy:– fields – records– files

• Working with Excel lists (aka files)

• Converting data to information

© Keith Vander Linden, 2000

A Data Hierarchy

• bit

• character, string and number

• field

• record

• file

• database

© Keith Vander Linden, 2000

Date Fields in Excel

• Is excel Y2K compatible?

• Would you store age or date of birth, or doesn’t it matter?

© Keith Vander Linden, 2000

Information from Lists

• Manipulating lists

• Filtering lists– Similar to database query features

• Summarizing lists with pivot tables– Similar to database report functions