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What are the odds like for the UK General Election?

The UK general election is almost upon us and it’s a tight race! It’s the most unpredictable election in memory and has already produced some lively debates and political speed-dating as potential alliances are considered.

There are so many sources from which to gain the latest on likely election winners, and one such are the bookies. There are some great websites with up to the minute odds on all the political parties and it got us thinking wouldn’t it be great to capture and analyse this information in Excel….

After several cups of coffee and Excel wizardry one of our Excel trainers has created a rough but working Excel 2015 UK General Election spreadsheet.  You can download the spreadsheet here.

What it does:
  • Automatically updates with latest betting odds every hour (you can refresh at any time)
  • View a chart to analyse the betting odds
What you can do:
  • By having the latest data you have the ability to create more charts to your heart’s content!
  • Capture the live data so that you can view it historically. How did the odds change over the week? Which party gained/lost the most (from an odds perspective!).
  • With a bit of VBA pokery you could even create lookup reports focussing on specific parties.

There is a lot of opinion out there on the general election but you could do worse than follow the signals of those who are putting their money where their mouth is!

Learn more:

If you would like to learn more about how we produced this spreadsheet; you may wish to track other live web data like stocks, competitor pricing and more, then just click here.

Acknowledgements and useful resources

http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/next-uk-general-election/most-seats

Election 2015: Poll tracker

http://www.ft.com/indepth/uk-general-election

Betting odds explained

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Fun Office Office 365

Spreadsheet Art – 10 of the Best

mona lisa spreadsheet art

Excel pixel art is a global phenomenon, and while it’s as geeky as ASCII art, it somehow feels a little friendlier – perhaps because it brings back happy memories of 8-bit computer games to people of a certain age.

Here are 10 of the best Excel pixel art pictures we were able to find online, although some of them are a little TOO good to have been drawn by hand.

1. Amit Agarwal – Pixelated Mona Lisa (pictured above)

Agarwal freely admits to using an automated spreadsheet art program to create his images, but an Excel pixel Mona Lisa is still worth a look, even if she wasn’t hand-drawn.

2. TormentedShopao – Boredom in the Office

super mario spreadsheet art

If this Mario scene really was hand-drawn on Google Docs (Google’s cloud-based competitor to Microsoft’s Excel) then DeviantArt contributor Shopao may be as tormented as his name suggests.

3. James (Christpunchers) – Donkey Kong in Excel

donkey kong spreadsheet art

Another from DeviantArt, and this time it’s Donkey Kong getting the Excel treatment, proving again the link between spreadsheet art and 8-bit gaming.

4. Stera8 – Trout’s Famous Catch

trouts famous catch spreadsheet arttrouts famous catch pixel art

Not actually anything to do with fishing, but this deserves a place on the list because a) it’s based on a real-life event, not an 8-bit video game, b) it was a first attempt, and c) it only took 90 minutes. Not bad!

5. Sakumoti – Megaman X in Excel

megaman x spreadsheet art

Pew pew! Mega Man X (his friends just call him X) made his first appearance in December 1993 on the SNES, some 14 years before the version of Excel used to create this picture of him.

6. Andrew G – Mario. In Excel

mario spreadsheet art

We’re not 100% sure Andrew G is the original artist of this piece, which appeared on BuzzFeed in March 2011 – not least because he says ‘Excel’ crashed before he could save it (oops), when the screenshot is clearly of OpenOffice (double oops!).

7. Mateus Ziehe – Nelson Muntz

simpsons spreadsheet art

It seems logical to transform a cartoon into pixel art, and it’s nice to see Nelson – complete with catchphrase – take some of the limelight for a change.

8. Jim Silverman – Sonic & Knuckles in Excel

sonic spreadsheet art

Too much Mario on this list and not enough Sonic? Let Jim Silverman’s Excel-based character interpretations fill that void – unless you’re looking for Tails, who didn’t make it into the picture for some reason. Poor Tails…!

9. Joey Garcia – Angry Birds Fan Art

angry birds spreadsheet art

The last videogame-inspired Excel pixel art creation on this list is not from the 8-bit era, but from the modern age of gaming apps, and features a Bad Piggy from Rovio’s Angry Birds – we think this one is a Minion Pig (if he’s a Corporal Pig, he’s lost his helmet!).

10. Google Docs – Holiday

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpcgRlXe40k&w=420&h=315]

Finally, not one to be left out, Google took to the Google Docs spreadsheet application to send a holiday greeting in 2008, posting a time-lapse video of their hand-drawn effort to YouTube.