My thanks go to this book's technical editors, Debra Dalgleish and Jon Price, who curbed some of my wilder flights of fancy. To its development editor, Laura Norman, who tactfully handled my optimistic page counts and my other editorial ineptitudes. And to Stephanie McComb for pulling it all together. It's long past time that I acknowledge people who have taught and encouraged me. Gene Glass, who thought better than he might have of my early attempts to get Excel to extract principal components. Dave Derby and Bev Monigal, who taught me relational database theory in the context of a very different version of Excel not Microsoft's but SBC's. My fellow Microsoft MVPs from the CompuServe forum days, Rob Bovey, David Hager, Tom Ogilvy, Jim Rech, Bob Umlas, and others who showed me the elegance that Microsoft built into Excel, as well as the errors, both egregious and subtle, that seem to never go away. Finally, of course, John LaTour, who ran the forum with such grace when we let him and such persuasiveness when we didn't. |
