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1. #Why does searching on a mac suck how to#
2. #Why does searching on a mac suck password#
3. #Why does searching on a mac suck series#

You have to right-click to get "Format Chart Area" to remove the grey, and that's the easiest of the lot. There is no way that I know of to change any of these defaults, and fixing them takes an inordinate amount of work. There's the godawful grey background, the inexplicable pastel color scheme, and the axes running right through the middle of the plot, rendering them completely illegible. This is at least the right kind of plot, but it's awful in almost every other respect. If you choose "Scatter," the resulting graph looks like this: What you want if you're attempting to do science with Excel is a "Scatter" plot, a little farther down the list.

row number, with the points helpfully labelled by the current corresponding to that row number. current, but in fact it's a graph of magnetic field vs.

This may superficially resemble a graph of magnetic field vs. The horizontal axis labels are just that: labels.

#Why does searching on a mac suck series#

The problem is, a "Line" plot as defined by Excel is a type of plot that is utterly unsuited to scientific data: it plots a series of points in the order in which they occur, spaced equally along the horizontal axis.

This is helpfully indicated by a little graphic showing points connected by lines, and it draws students like rotting meat draws flies. The garbage graph your see results from students using the "Chart Wizard" and choosing the first thing that looks reasonable, a "Line" plot. This is a fairly standard experimental technique to guard against things changing over time. What we have here simulates data that was collected in a perfectly responsible manner, by taking half the points while increasing the current, and the second half filling in the gaps between the first set while decreasing the current. I've constructed my fake data so as to make the effect as bad as possible, but this is the sort of thing that really happens with a lot of graphs. These students have done a terrible job of taking the data, right? No, they did the data collection right, but were tripped up by Excel. The graph I get from students is almost always something like this: Let's say, for example, that we're doing a lab that asks students to measure two things that are proportional to one another- the magnetic field along the axis of a coil for various currents, for example. This is a constant source of irritation, as the default settings are carefully chosen so as to make it difficult for students to do a good job of data presentation.

#Why does searching on a mac suck how to#

I gripe about Excel a lot, as we're more or less forced to use it for data analysis in the intro labs (students who have taken the intro engineering course supposedly are taught how to work with Excel, and it's kind of difficult to buy a computer without it these days, so it eliminates the "I couldn't do anything with the data" excuse for not doing lab reports). Or at least no one will know your computer’s name is “Badass Mama’s Laptop.” That’s important too.Yesterday's bad graphic post spurred me to finally get around to doing the "Why Does Excel Suck So Much?" post I've been meaning to do for a while. And you’ll be just a tiny bit safer as you sprint through that jet-setting, Starbucks network–joining lifestyle of yours. In fact, I’d suggest turning everything within the left-hand list of this pane off if you’re not specifically using those options.īut after you switch things, you can just close out of System Preferences, as there’s no “save” or “apply” button-your changes will happen automatically. If that’s on, your Mac will show up as an available device on whatever networks you join, so I’d recommend toggling that off if you don’t need it.

#Why does searching on a mac suck password#

(If your Mac’s name is “Chester’s Laptop” and your password is “chester1,” for example, that’s not the most secure system.)īut in any case, “File Sharing” is the choice here that we’re concerned with. At the top is the name your Mac uses when it advertises itself on the network if you do plan to leave the “File Sharing” option (highlighted near the middle) on, it might be a good idea to change this to something generic just for security’s sake. Within that pane, you’ll find a host of options. So to check your own setup, then, open System Preferences from the Apple Menu at the upper-left corner of your screen, and then click on “Sharing.”