Tuesday 31 December 2019

Launch a New Tech Career in the New Year With Stone River eLearning

With the New Year fast approaching, now is a good time to reflect on the previous 12 months and plan ahead. If you want to switch jobs or climb the career ladder in 2020, Stone River eLearning can help. This online platform offers unlimited access to over 300 certified courses on code, design, animation, and many more skills. Right now, you can get lifetime membership for only $59 via MakeUseOf Deals.

Learn Anything

In times past, recruiters would only consider candidates with a degree. But in many careers, skills and talent are now valued more than certificates.

Whether you want to develop iOS apps for a living or become a graphic designer, Stone River can help you get started. This platform has over 3,500 hours of video training, covering a wide range of topics and skill levels.

Aspiring web designers can master HTML, CSS, node.js, and Bootstrap. Programmers can dive into Java and Python, while graphic designers can master Photoshop. You can also learn about cybersecurity, cryptocurrencies, business insights, and more.

Along with unlimited access to this training, members get downloadable eBooks, personal guidance, free entry to certification exams, and one year of membership to CodeMag.

Lifetime Membership for $59

Lifetime access to Stone River is worth $11,500, but you can become a member now for just $59 with this deal.

Prices subject to change

Read the full article: Launch a New Tech Career in the New Year With Stone River eLearning



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5 Sites to Search and Find the Best Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for You

Online Learning and MOOC Search

Online learning is bigger than ever before, with top universities offering free courses on the internet. In fact, there are so many of these massive open online courses (MOOCs) that you need to rely on websites to help you figure out the best education for you.

From MIT to Coursera, there are some amazing websites that offer free college courses online. But go to any and you’ll be overwhelmed by the choices on offer. Plus, these sites limit themselves to courses available on their own platform.

So how do you search for or discover the best MOOC? These websites offer robust search engines, filters, reviews, and guided paths for free online courses.

1. Class Central (Web): Top 100 Free Online Courses

Class Central lists the best free MOOCs and online courses

Class Central is all about free online courses but it also lists paid courses. It includes a variety of universities, including MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. It neatly categorizes all these courses into subjects like computer science, business, humanities, engineering, etc.

The website has a powerful search engine to find any type of online course you’re looking for. You can also browse MOOCs by providers, universities, institutions, careers, and languages.

Class Central’s best feature is the regularly updated lists they provide. At any time, you can check the list of the top 100 free online courses of all time. The website also creates annual lists of the best MOOCs of the year, so if you want to know what’s new and awesome in 2019, there’s a ready reckoner available.

2. Course Root (Web): Search Over 80,000 Courses

Search over 80,000 MOOCs and online courses at Course Root

Course Root is one of the most comprehensive databases of MOOCs, both free and paid. It is an aggregator that lists everything from Khan Academy and Coursera to those made by smaller universities from around the world. And it simplifies the process of finding the right course for you.

At Course Root, you can choose a subject and then add filters to find the type of course that’s best for you. The three main filters are Difficulty (beginner, intermediate, expert), price (free or paid), and certificate (okay, good, excellent). The certificate filter is especially useful if you’re taking a course so that you can add accomplishments to your CV.

You can further filter the results by the number of hours it takes to complete the course, and choose from one of the eight most popular online course platforms. For each course, you’ll get a brief description, as well as find out whether it’s self-paced or an in-session course.

3. MOOC-List (Web): Most Comprehensive Filter System to Find MOOCs

MOOC-List has the Most Comprehensive Filter System to search for MOOCs

If you want to search or filter your results by various parameters, then it doesn’t get better than MOOC-List. The website has a multiple criteria search that lets you find any online course based on:

  • Words from the course title
  • Provider
  • University / Entity
  • Category
  • Length
  • Estimated Effort
  • Language
  • Subtitles
  • Country
  • Peer Assessments
  • Team Projects
  • Exam
  • Certificate
  • Audio Lectures
  • Video Lectures
  • Start Date

As you start looking at more and more MOOCs, you will find that many of these criteria are extremely useful in figuring out the right type of course for you. For example, peer assessments can play a major role in how much you understand a course, as can subtitles if you’re having trouble picking up accents.

MOOC-List also notifies you of upcoming MOOCs and free online courses for the next 30 days, sorted by date. All of these features combine to make it one of the best sites for beginners to online courses.

4. Course Talk (Web): Discover Courses Through Student Reviews

Discover online courses and MOOCs based on student reviews at Course Talk

Given how big the MOOCs industry is, there is naturally a lot of people who are gaming the system through search engines and ads. If you prefer to rely on word of mouth for your recommendations, Course Talk lets you find courses based on reviews by students.

People who take a course rate it on different aspects on the website. Course Talk also encourages them to write detailed reviews so you can figure out what you’re getting into, from someone who has already done the course. Based on ratings, there are also leaderboards for the top course providers.

Meanwhile, try the Course Advisor by clicking Recommendations. Course Talk will ask you different questions about your interests and recommend a few of the best-reviewed courses that you’re likely to find interesting.

A lot of the better reviews on the site are pretty old now, but they’re still beneficial. After all, education doesn’t have to be new or change every year for it to be an engaging lesson.

5. MOOCLab’s Degree Paths (Web): Guides to Learn Like a Degree Course

MOOCLab's Degree Paths make playlists of online courses to give you an online education equivalent of a bachelor's degree

MOOCLab believes that if you combine the right courses from different online learning resources, you can get an education that is close to a traditional bachelor’s degree course. It calls these learning playlists Degree Paths.

Currently, MOOCLab has 272 degree paths, divided into four main categories: computer science, business administration, health science, and general education. Click any for further options, like a core business course or a business specialization course. The website estimates that if you commit to 15 hours of study time per week, you can finish a degree path in two to three years.

Before you ask, no, you won’t get a certified bachelor’s degree by doing any of these. Upon completion, you can get a certificate for a small fee. MOOCLab’s degree paths are a great way to learn about a subject in detail, but potential employers are not going to see it as actual academic qualifications.

Google’s Best Courses

Apart from educational institutions, Google has jumped into the MOOC game. The internet giant offers a variety of online courses through its own portals or through other platforms like Udacity. But don’t worry, you don’t have to go hunting for them, we rounded up the best Google online courses for you.

Read the full article: 5 Sites to Search and Find the Best Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for You



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Monday 30 December 2019

10 Simple Design Rules for Professional Microsoft Word Documents

word-formatting-fonts

Microsoft Word is packed with so many features that you can produce pretty much whatever you want with it. But these features don’t always result in the kind of beautiful, high-quality, and professional document designs that may be expected of you.

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It’s one thing to know everything about Microsoft Word, all of its intricacies and quirks and functions—it’s something else entirely to know what makes a great document.

1. Keep It Simple, Less Is More

Want to know how to make a Word document look good? Just keep it simple, and take advantage of the hidden features that Microsoft Word comes with. Let this be the driving force behind any design decisions in your documents, and if you walk away remembering only one thing from this article, let it be this one!

When writing a document, the content should be the main focus. Document formatting guidelines exist to make that content easier to read and digest. Eliminate the temptation to introduce eye-catching elements that only serve to distract. Maximize whitespace. Keep your wording tight and revise any wordy sentences or paragraphs. Simple and minimal rules over all.

2. Choose a Context-Appropriate Typeface

Your first big design decision should be which typeface you’re going to use. Traditional knowledge says that serif fonts are easier to read in printed documents whereas sans-serif fonts are better on the eyes when read on a digital screen.

Good examples of serif fonts include Garamond, Georgia, Hoefler Text, and Palatino, while good examples of sans-serif fonts include Arial, Gill Sans, Helvetica, and Lucida Sans. Skip Comic Sans if you want to avoid one of the most common presentation design mistakes. And whatever you end up using, stick to the same typeface throughout the document. If desired, you can use a different typeface for headings.

3. Use Standard Font Size and Color

Microsoft Word Formatting Font Size and Color

You can’t learn how to format a word document to look professional without paying attention to look of the text. Most business and academic papers are typed in 12-point font size, which generally produces the most readable paragraphs when combined with the guidelines for page size, margins, and line spacing later in this article.

Some information-dense reports may sometimes go down to 10-point font size, but never less than that. You can speed up font resizing and other actions in Microsoft Word with keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Office.

In general, it’s best to keep your hands off of anything related to colors, especially for printed documents. You’ll have to pay more for the color ink, and it won’t carry over if the document ever gets copied. For digital documents, reserve colored text for critical warnings and the like. Prefer to emphasize using bolded and italic text.

4. Use Standard Page Size and Margins

Nearly all office documents are printed for standard 8½” x 11″ pages, known as US Letter size (also known as A4 elsewhere, which is 210mm x 297mm). This is the only size that’s guaranteed to be available regardless of which printer you use.

As for margins, most style manuals and style guides call for a 1″ margin on all sides of the page, which produces the best readability for line lengths and allows for written annotations if necessary. However, if the document is going to be bound in a binder, you may want to increase the side margins to 1½” to accommodate the rings.

5. Align Paragraphs to the Left

Microsoft Word Tips Align Left

You may be tempted to use justified alignment because that’s what’s used in newspapers and novels and some textbooks, but it’s the wrong choice for office and academic documents. Why is it important to make a document formal? Without formality, your document becomes unreadable.

What you want is left alignment for text. This produces jaggedness on the right side of paragraphs, but it keeps letter spacing as intended by whatever typeface you’re using, and that means optimal legibility. Otherwise, you may end up with typographic rivers, which are extremely distracting and simply look ugly.

6. Indent the First Lines of Paragraphs

Indent the First Lines of Paragraphs

Paragraphs should have no extra spacing between them, and the first lines of paragraphs should be indented to make each paragraph stand out. The only exception is for paragraphs that directly follow a section heading, which can be left unindented because the surrounding context makes it clear that it’s its own paragraph.

A general rule of thumb is to make the indent size the same as the font size. Make sure you use Word’s paragraph styling features to handle the indents rather than using the Tab key!

7. Place Images Between Paragraphs

Microsoft Word Chart Image Formatting

It may be okay to place images inside a paragraph and allow the surrounding text to flow around it, and if your organization prefers it that way, then go ahead and do that. But generally speaking, it can damage readability, especially in data-driven reports.

The safest option, particularly for graphs and charts and tables, is to put images in between paragraphs and keep them center aligned. That way your images are never vying for attention with the surrounding text. It also helps captions to stand out.

8. Choose Context-Appropriate Line Spacing

Microsoft Word Paragraph Line Spacing

The right choice for line spacing (the whitespace that separates a line of text from the next line of text) really depends on what kind of document you’re writing.

Academic papers should first follow any academic style guides in place, then prefer double-spacing if no style guide exists. Business and office documents tend to be single-spaced to minimize the number of pages needed when printing, but digital documents may be easier to read if spaced at somewhere between 120-150 percent.

9. Break Up Text With Headings and Lists

Microsoft Word Headings Formatting

The longer the document, the more important headings become. Would you rather read a 20-page report that’s nothing but a wall of text from end to end? Or a 30-page report that’s organized into proper sections, subsections, and headings? I prefer the latter every time.

Lists are also good for breaking up walls of text and drawing eyes to important points. Use numbered lists when counting a set of items (e.g. “the five attributes of a successful entrepreneur”) or when providing step-by-step instructions. Otherwise, bulleted lists are fine. Just be sure to avoid overusing lists, which detracts readability from your Word document design.

10. Separate Sections With Breaks

Microsoft Word Formatting Section Breaks

When you want to learn how to make your report look professional, you need to get acquainted with section breaks. In Microsoft Word, section breaks allow you to differentiate certain pages with changes in orientation, columns, headers, footers, page numbers, and more. Section breaks come in four forms:

  • Next Page: Start the next section on the following page.
  • Continuous: Start the next section on the current page.
  • Even Page: Start the next section on the next even page.
  • Odd Page: Start the next section on the next even page.

If your document is large enough to need chapters, this is the best way to format them in a clean way. Each chapter should be made with a “Next Page” section break, or the “Even Page” or “Odd Page” section breaks if you’re going to place it within a binder.

Learning How to Make a Word Document Look Professional

Unless your organization or school requires a specific layout and format, you can skip the hard work of setting up your own template and just download one instead. This helps you quickly achieve a professional document design.

Need an attractive cover page to finalize your document? These cover page templates will put the finishing touches on your Word document.

Read the full article: 10 Simple Design Rules for Professional Microsoft Word Documents



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Make a Personal Budget With Microsoft Excel in 4 Easy Steps

You don’t need expensive software to help you become financially stable. Today, I’m going to share a few of the nifty spreadsheet techniques that I used to generate a useful budget.

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Also, I’m going to share a technique to pay down your debt in a fraction of the time using the same exact payments you’re making today.  It’s a trick that I’ve seen a lot of people trying to sell elsewhere on the net — I’m going to share it with MakeUseOf readers right here, for free.

I want to show you the four ways Excel helped create a stable personal budget.

The Power of Budgeting

Years ago, my wife and I were saddled with so much debt that we thought it would take the next sixty years to pay it all off. There came a moment when we realized that we either had to make a personal budget that could outsmart the system or it would keep us enslaved for our entire adult lives.

That’s when I sat down with a blank Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and just started playing around, using various techniques to cut down our budget to bare bones.

My goal was to create a debt plan that wouldn’t take decades to eliminate our debt, but also wouldn’t keep us eating macaroni and cheese for dinner until we retire. With this plan, we were able to eliminate all of our credit card debt in only five years. In the end, we even had good enough credit to get approved for a low-rate mortgage to buy our first home!

1. Structure Your Personal Budget Spreadsheet

If you’ve ever tried to make a personal budget you know the basics. You need to make a log of all of your bills and all of your income. Your bottom line is how much you have leftover for fun, or tells you how much spending to cut.

It sounds easy, but when you start entering all of your details into a budget things can get very messy very quickly. Sometimes the numbers look bleak, a lot of people give up after the first attempt.

A basic layout is easy enough. List your bills in the first left column. Then in the next few columns list total balance you owe, monthly required payments, and the date that the bill is usually due.  These four columns are really all you need to create a budget.

Excel Budgeting Tools

Here I’ve gone an extra step and added a column to the right for each month for easy expense tracking.

However, as your budget grows to a large number of columns and rows you’re going to run into a problem. The screen will start to scroll and you can’t always see the bills to the left or the header at the top. The quick and easy technique to fix this is using the Freeze Panes feature.

Excel Freezing Panes

First, select the box where the intersection at the upper left represents the row and column that you don’t want to scroll when you use the spreadsheet’s scrollbars. Select View > Freeze Panes.

Freeze Pane Demo for Excel

 

When you scroll up or down, the header and left column remain in view so you always know what the value you’ve selected applies to. This has saved me a great deal of frustration where I normally would have had to keep scrolling back to check which bill I’d selected.

If you’re new to Excel and need some tips on getting started with creating spreadsheets, make sure to check out Excel courses for beginners.

2. Organize Your Budget Using Shading

I remember searching for a free budget spreadsheet and finding all of these templates filled with data that just made my head spin. Without clear lines separating the major sections of your budget, you’ll have a hard time zoning in on the area that you’re interested in.

The best way to organize a budget spreadsheet is by shading each summary section between your major groups.

Excel Formatting for Personal Finance Sheet

As you can see here the first section of the budget pertains to bills, including household utilities and fixed bills. Another section is devoted to credit cards. At the bottom of this particular section, the total for fixed bills is highlighted with light green shading so it’s clear and easy to find.

Excel Budgeting Sheet

Once you start shading rows, the entire spreadsheet is easier to read.

Excel Formatting Using Fill Tool

Getting started with shading rows is very easy to do.

The Fill tool is located on the Excel menu bar under the Home menu and looks like a paint can tipping over with paint pouring out. Just highlight the entire row and then click the Fill button and select what color you’d like to use.

Try to avoid colors that are too bright or too dark. The shading provides a nice divider when looking at your budget, it should not be overwhelming.

3. Use Excel Formulas to Project Your Credit Card Balances Into the Future

Now that you can make a personal budget that is well organized and easy to follow, the next step is attacking credit card debt.

Credit Card Chart in Excel

 

Set up your debt log in the same way. Split and freeze the panes, but this time list each month along the left and your credit card balances (and monthly payments) to the right.

After you’ve entered your current balance in the top cell (In this example Capital One is $3,000), in the next cell below it you would enter a formula that multiplies that balance by your card’s interest rate and divides by twelve. That is your estimated monthly interest.

Then you subtract your monthly payment from the balance and add the interest that you just calculated.

Now you can duplicate the formula for every month below it by clicking and holding the small box to the lower right of the cell you just calculated and dragging it down as far as you like.

Each month will have a new calculated balance based on the previous month’s balance.

Chart for Paying Off Credit With Excel

When you do this formula, you’ll eventually find the date where the balance is completely paid off. As you can see, when I maintain a $250 payment every month it’ll take me until July 2021 to pay off the entire Advanta credit card balance.

For more on saving money and reducing your spending, take a look at these helpful apps and sites.

4. Recalculate Payments Based on Interest and Eliminate Your Debt

By playing around with this kind of spreadsheet I uncovered a common-sense solution that a lot of finance gurus out there are charging people for.

Instead of maintaining constant payments on each of your credit cards until it’s paid off, you pay the minimum balance on all of them and divert all of your current “debt-payment” money toward the credit card with the highest interest.

Here is how it works.

Chart for Paying off Credit in Excel

According to my sheet, the Advanta card will be paid off in May of 2021. Instead of saving this money, it’s going to be used to pay more debt.

I took the extra $200 I was paying on the Advanta and added it to the Capital One payment. This takes the payment from $100 to $300.

Now the Capital One card will be paid off by February 2022. If you have additional credit card balances, you simply “snowball” the payment and eliminate your debt in months rather than years.

This is why I love Excel. By using the ability to autofill the monthly balance calculations, I was able to test different scenarios to pay off debts faster.

Using Excel for Budgeting

The power of Excel for budgeting and debt planning like this can’t be understated. And even if you don’t use Excel, you should at least explore the various budget and debt planning tools available out there. Make the commitment to try a few out and work on it regularly.

In the beginning, it will take a lot of work to set up, but it will be worth it in the end.

And, be sure to check out these ways to avoid overspending and then bookmark some of these helpful sites that keep you on top of the financial market.

Read the full article: Make a Personal Budget With Microsoft Excel in 4 Easy Steps



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The 4 Worst Arguments for Teaching Cursive in Schools

cursive

American schools are slowly phasing out cursive handwriting, which is an unambiguously good move. Cursive is an archaic form of communication—one best left to history.

Let’s take a look at some common arguments for teaching cursive in schools, and why they don’t hold up.

Note: In February 2015, former author Justin Pot wrote an opinion article titled Cursive Writing Is Obsolete; Schools Should Teach Programming Instead. Then, in August 2015, he wrote this follow-up article to respond to some of the most common arguments.

The article needed an update, so we’ve brought it up to modern standards. While the author performing the update agrees with the sentiment that cursive writing is not worth teaching in schools today, we’ve preserved as much of the content and tone of Justin’s original article as possible.

Defining Cursive Writing

To be clear, when we talk about “cursive handwriting” we speak mostly of the Palmer Method, a simplified form of script popularized in the early 20th century. It was designed specifically with speed in mind (in part to better compete with typewriters).

Palmer_Method_alphabet

This kind of writing is, in our humble opinion:

  • Slower than typing.
  • Harder to learn and read than print handwriting.
  • Ugly when compared to more stylized scripts.

There’s literally no reason for schools to teach the Palmer Method, outside of nostalgia. While we feel that cursive should not be taught in schools, we want to respond to the other side who thinks cursive is far from pointless.

Many Made Good Arguments in the Comments

Plenty of educators agreed with some of the original premise and critiqued the finer points. We welcome these conversations.

Educator comment on cursive writing

We can concede some of the arguments for why teaching cursive writing makes sense. For example:

  • There is a sense of accomplishment that comes with learning cursive.
    • While this is true, we think teaching a beautiful, pre-Palmer script in art class is a better way for kids to get that feeling. Let’s stop pretending this is a practical skill.
  • Being able to read old letters from relatives is extremely valuable.
    • Of course, but you can learn to read documents like this without spending dozens of hours learning to write an obsolete script yourself. It’s still English, even if it takes a little longer to decipher.

Feel free to disagree with us on these or other reasoned points—we invite the conversation. But what we won’t invite is any variation of the following arguments, which are pretty much complete gibberish.

1. Kids Will Be Cut Off From History!

A number of people claimed that not teaching cursive cuts people off from their history. The typical comment goes like this:

Cursive writing argument about original documents

Some went a little bit further, submitting speculative fiction for our consideration:

Speculative fiction comments on cursive

Ridiculous as this might seem, there is a certain logic here. Learning to write cursive means you can also read it, meaning you can better understand documents like this:

Cursive copy of the Declaration of Independence

You probably know this as the original version of the Declaration of Independence, right? Surprise: that’s not what most people read at the time. Most historians agree that this engrossed copy of the declaration was signed in August of 1776, a month after the document was famously ratified on July 4th, 1776.

The first published copies of the document, known as the Dunlap broadsides, looked like this:

Dunlap broadsides Declaration of Independence

That’s right: in July of 1776, Congress approved the original Declaration and people immediately started reading it in print. This shouldn’t be surprising; the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, over three hundred years after Gutenberg’s printing press.

Kids not taught cursive would have no trouble reading this. If you want to argue that Americans in July of 1776 were less connected to history than someone who read a cursive version later on, we don’t know what to say to you. The fact is that printed copies of America’s founding documents are widely available today, just as they were in the 1700s—in many cases before the handwritten “originals” we know today.

In addition, none of these documents were written using the hideous Palmer Method, which wasn’t popularized until the early 20th century. Go ahead and dig through some old newspapers, and you’ll see the difference.

One does not need to learn cursive in order to read America’s founding documents. It wasn’t the case in the 1700s and certainly is not now. Consider that most people alive today cannot read religious texts or other historical documents in their original languages, either.

2. When the Apocalypse Comes, We’ll Need It!

Some of the silliest comments revolved around what would happen if someone took out the electrical grid, such as this one:

Post apocalyptic handwriting

The obvious counters for this argument are as follows:

  • Print handwriting works just fine without electricity.
  • Assuming we’re going to make surviving post-apocalyptic scenarios part of the curriculum, we should probably prioritize trapping, fishing, farming, and log cabin construction over letters with loops.

3. Kids Need to Have a Signature!

One subject came up again and again: everyone in today’s society needs to have a signature.

signature argument

This seems like a good point, but we don’t think it holds up. Here are some of the reasons why:

  • As any clerk will tell you, most people’s signatures are entirely illegible squiggles at this point. Most places also don’t bother to check your signature anyway.
  • Spending hundreds of hours of classroom time on an archaic form of written communication specifically so we can continue to verify transactions seems weird, considering most signatures aren’t legible.
    • Even someone who doesn’t know how to write in cursive could come up with a solid signature in a reasonable amount of time. Failing that, your legal signature could literally be a squiggly horizontal line.
  • Signing documents electronically is increasingly common, and might well become the norm. The US ESIGN Act was passed all the way back in 2000 and lays out guidelines for digital signatures.
  • Printing works perfectly fine for signatures, as a few comments pointed out.

print signature comment

4. Technology Is Destroying Something Real

A number of comments made nostalgic arguments, saying that something real is being lost in this transition. This one, left under an article on Justin Pot’s personal website, represents this argument best:

nostalgia-cursive-real-life

We respect what this person has said, but think these arguments miss a key point. Comments like this imply that cursive handwriting is some innate part of being human, but it isn’t. It’s an invention.

Cursive writing is a technology.

There’s nothing natural about handwriting: it’s a tool that we used for a particular period of time to communicate. Today people are using it less and less because they’ve deemed the alternatives as better.

In a sense, that’s too bad—something is lost every time a technology is replaced. The compass meant fewer people learned how to navigate using the stars, while GPS has resulted in fewer people knowing how to use a compass.

But this doesn’t mean we should give up on the GPS, or teach everyone how to navigate by the stars. Some people will pursue this knowledge for fun, or because it’s been passed down by their family, but mandating everyone learns it just isn’t realistic.

The fact that people use cursive writing less often today isn’t because schools have stopped teaching it. The opposite is true: schools aren’t teaching cursive because students don’t use that skill later in life. Many haven’t been for decades.

Ours isn’t the activist argument. The other side wants to keep something irrelevant in the school systems out of nostalgia, while that time could be used for teaching something productive. We’re not the one who needs to leave well enough alone.

But hey, maybe we’re just lazy and uncoordinated.

Cursive Lazy Argument

Better Uses of Time Than Teaching Cursive Writing

We close with a few ideas on what students could learn that’s a more productive use of time than antiquated cursive writing. While some schools may teach the following, they’re not as ingrained in the schooling system as cursive writing has been:

  • Computer programming. The ubiquitous nature of computers today means that learning a bit about how to program them is extremely useful. Learning to code also teaches logical thinking.
  • Civics. A 2019 study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 22% of sampled Americans cannot name a single branch of the government. This is, frankly, pathetic—any country would do well to educate its citizens on how the government actually works.
  • Personal finance. Many kids graduate from school not understanding basic financial principles, like how interest rates work or how to save for retirement. WalletHub found that some 10 percent of people think it’s worth going into debt for a new iPhone. Surely learning to manage money, which is something you use every day, is more important than writing letters in a certain style.

Should Cursive Still Be Taught in Schools?

Progress takes place over centuries, meaning something that seems like part of the natural order when you’re a kid was alien to prior generations.

The Palmer Method was harshly criticized and resisted in its early days, but its speed meant it ultimately won out over better-looking scripts. Over one hundred years later, this method is on the way out, because the alternatives are better.

Making predictions about technology is impossible, but so is trying to prevent an obsolete technology from sticking around. And that’s exactly what anyone trying to keep cursive handwriting in the school curriculum is trying to do. Why dedicate so much time to something most people barely use anymore? You’d be hard-pressed to find a job interviewer who finds handwriting at all relevant.

But this, of course, is our opinion. We’d like to hear yours too. And if this has inspired a drive to return to cursive for you, check out the best resources to improve your handwriting.

Read the full article: The 4 Worst Arguments for Teaching Cursive in Schools



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How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Numbers on Mac

mac-numbers-tips

When you’re working with data in Apple Numbers on your Mac, you may run into a situation where you have duplicates. This could be names, email addresses, products, colors, or something else. And if you have a lot of data in your spreadsheet, finding and removing those duplicates can be a challenge.

We’re going to show you a few different methods you can use to find duplicates and then either mark them or eliminate them if you like.

Find Duplicates in Numbers With Sorting

If you don’t have a lot of data in your spreadsheet, you can sort it and check for duplicates manually. This method might actually save you time in the long run, but again, only if you don’t have thousands of rows in your sheet.

Sort by One Column

  1. Select the table of data by clicking anywhere in the table and then clicking the circle on the top left. This is to the left of column A.
  2. Move your cursor over the column you want to sort by.
  3. Click the arrow that displays next to the column letter and choose either Sort Ascending or Sort Descending.

Sort Ascending to Find Numbers Duplicates

Sort by Multiple Columns

  1. Follow the same steps as above, but instead of selecting a Sort option in the shortcut menu, click Show Sort Options.
  2. The right-hand sidebar should open to the Sort
  3. Make sure that Sort Entire Table is selected in the first dropdown box.
  4. In the Sort by dropdown, choose the column and below that, pick Ascending or Descending.
  5. Another dropdown box should appear beneath where you can choose another column and its sort order.
  6. The data should sort automatically, but if not, click the Sort Now button at the top of the sidebar.

Sort Multiple Columns to Find Numbers Duplicates

Once you sort your data you should more easily be able to spot the duplicates and then mark or remove them as you need to.

Find Duplicates in Numbers With Functions

There are two built-in functions in Numbers that you can use to find duplicates. These are the IF and COUNTIF functions. IF can display duplicates as True or False, or a word that you assign. COUNTIF will display how many times an item appears to indicate duplicates.

Find Duplicates With the IF Function

To illustrate how the function will work, our example data will be product names in column A and our table has column headers in row 1.

  1. Add another column or move to an empty column in your sheet where you want the duplicate indicator.
  2. Click the cell in the second row, below the header, and open the Functions Editor by entering the Equal sign (=).
  3. Enter IF(A2)=(A1),”Duplicate”,” “ in the editor. This will compare the cell with the one above it and enter the word Duplicate if it’s a duplicate and enter a space if it’s not.
  4. Click the checkmark to apply the formula.
  5. Copy the formula to the subsequent cells by clicking the cell it’s in and dragging it down the column when you see the yellow circle on the border.

IF Function to Find Duplicates in Numbers

If you prefer not to use a word of your own and just display True for duplicates and False for non-duplicates, you can simply enter (A2)=(A1) in the editor. This works without adding IF before it.

True False to Find Duplicates in Numbers

Find Duplicates With the COUNTIF Function

We’ll use the same example data as above using column A and our table has column headers.

  1. Add another column or move to an empty column in your sheet where you want the duplicate indicator.
  2. Click the cell in the second row, below the header, and open the Functions Editor by entering the Equal sign (=).
  3. Enter COUNTIF(A,A2) in the editor. A is the column and A2 represents the row.
  4. Click the checkmark to apply the formula.
  5. Copy the formula to the subsequent cells the same way as Step 5 above.

COUNTIF Function to Find Duplicates in Numbers

You should now see numbers in that new column showing how many times the item in your duplicate column appears. For our example in the screenshot above, you can see that Cap appears three times, Coat once, and Gloves twice.

Remove Duplicates from Numbers

If you use one of the above functions to identify your duplicates because you have a lot of data, then you likely want to remove them without searching manually, right? If so, you can simply jump to the top of our tutorial and use one of the sorting methods.

You can sort by the word Duplicate using the IF function, True, or False, or by numbers, if you use the COUNTIF function. Once you sort, you can simply delete the duplicate rows.

Merge and Delete Duplicates from Numbers

Maybe you do want to remove the duplicates, but you also don’t want to lose any data. For instance, you might have inventory data for products like in our example. So you want to total those amounts before you delete the duplicates. To do this, you’ll need to merge the data first and for this task, you’ll use both a formula and a function in Numbers.

Product Inventory In Numbers

Merge the Data

For our example, we’re going to leave the Duplicate indicator column we used with the IF function because we’ll need it later. Then, we’re going to add another column to the right for our Totals.

  1. Click the cell in the second row, below the header, and open the Functions Editor by entering the Equal sign (=).
  2. Enter (B2)+IF(A2)=(A3),(H3),0 in the editor. (You can see a breakdown of these formula elements below.)
  3. Click the checkmark to apply the formula.
  4. Copy the formula to the subsequent cells.

Formula to Merge Data in Numbers

Formula Breakdown

(B2) is the cell containing our first quantity.

+ will add that quantity to what follows.

IF(A2)=(A3) checks for a duplicate between the two cells.

(H3) is where the result of the quantity total will display.

0 will be added if there’s no duplicate.

Once you finish merging the data, it’s important that you double-check to be sure everything adds up correctly.

Delete the Duplicates

To remove the duplicates after you merge data, you’ll use the sort action again. But first, you need to create new columns to copy and paste the data results as values so they are no longer formulas.

Using our same example, we’ll copy and paste the Duplicate and Total columns.

  1. Select both columns and then click Edit > Copy from the menu bar.
  2. Select the new columns where you want to paste them and click Edit > Paste Formula Results from the menu bar.
  3. Delete the columns with the formulas by selecting them again and right-clicking or clicking the column header arrow and choosing Delete Selected Columns.

Delete Selected Columns in Numbers

Now you can sort by the Duplicate indicator column that you keep using the sorting instructions at the beginning of this tutorial. You should see all of your duplicates grouped together so you can delete those rows.

Delete Numbers Duplicates

You can next also remove the original Quantity and Duplicate columns you used for the functions and formulas. This will leave you with no duplicates and merged data.

Merged Data in Numbers No Duplicates

Note: Again, before you delete columns, rows, or other data from your spreadsheet, be sure that everything is correct and that you no longer need it.

Duplicates in Numbers

It’s bound to happen at one time or another, duplicates showing up in your Numbers spreadsheets. But with this tutorial, hopefully you can easily identify those duplicates, merge their data if needed, and then remove the duplicates for a cleaner sheet.

For more help with your spreadsheets, check out how to use conditional formatting in Numbers or add checkboxes, sliders, and popup menus in Numbers on Mac.

Read the full article: How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Numbers on Mac



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