William_Quixote comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong

80 Post author: Yvain 07 December 2012 09:04PM

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Comment author: William_Quixote 30 November 2012 12:57:23PM 2 points [-]

Also, a hint for other people playing with the data in Excel format: A lot of the numbers are in text format, and a pain to convert to numeric format in a way that allows you to manipulate them. The easiest work around (so long as you don't want to do anything complicated) is to just paste the needed columns either into google spreadsheet, or into another Excel sheet that's been formatted numerically. If you want to do something complicated you probably need to find the "right" way to fix it.

multiplying text by 1 or adding zero can often force auto conversion in excel. You can do this by past as values multiply. Shortcut keys are copy 1 then highlight data ALT+e s then v m enter.