Leighton Price

Data Analysis & Information Management

With a background in business analysis, moving, interpreting and sharing data is a big part of my life. Consequently, I just love a good spreadsheet and creating robust solutions with them.

Mention spreadsheets and Microsoft Excel springs to mind. Indeed, I'm as enthusiastic about Excel's Power Query as the next person. However, in recent years I've become a power user of Google Sheets. It's a superb tool for collaboration and/or remote working, has a clean UI and for 95% of Excel users, is "good enough." Having used SQL, I find Google Sheets' built-in QUERY function to be extremely powerful and use it extensively. I'm also using Google Apps Script more and more.

You can get in touch with me here.

Data Analysis: I've probably got a spreadsheet for that

Here you can access live examples of how I can import, transform and visualise data using Google Sheets.

  • Portfolio of 90+ Google Sheets - A Google Drive folder listing practical and creative uses of my function/formula knowledge. Click on an example to open up a sheet and review in your browser
  • Wales 6N Rugby App - Disappointed by the lack of a decent Welsh-focused app for the 2020 Six Nations rugby tournament, I made my own using the Glide platform, powered by data held in Google Sheets. It got a bit out of hand with the amount of data I ended up crunching!

    • Below are some examples of dashboards and tools I've published to the web from Google Sheets.

  • COVID-19 UK Daily Cases - A topical example of publicly available data being imported daily into Sheets with a scheduled Apps Script, parsed with QUERY & used to power a fully-automated dashboard
  • US Presidents Age Analysis - Wikipedia data analysed and charted for the ages of the 45 Presidents of the United States upon first assuming office
  • US Election 2020 - Ages of candidates at time of inauguration in January 2021 calculated and analysed
  • UK General Election 2019 - This re-models and visualises live data imported from a publicly shared Google Sheet
  • Sheets v Excel - Which one has the most functions? Well, there's only one way to find out. Make a live dashboard using IMPORTHTML, QUERY & INDEX to find the winner!!
  • 4 years of Todoist - Combining data from each of the "your year in review," summaries Todoist has issued since 2016, Google Sheets helped me gain some further insights on my usage of this excellent task management application
  • Google Maps - A map of Welsh SIMM summit peaks, built from both online data and the what3words API
  • PDF Data Extraction - An example of how data held within PDFs can be extracted as CSV files for use in spreadsheets using Tabula
  • Six Nations - Wales Win/Loss analysis - A creative use of Sparklines to visualise Wales' performance over the the 21 years of the Six Nations
  • Six Nations - England v Wales - Analysis of the 22 halves of rugby played between the 2 teams in the Six Nations at Twickenham
  • Wales v England - All results from 2000 - References live Wikipedia data and updates its insights automatically whenever Wikipedia gets edited
  • RWC 2019 pool stage analysis - Again, transforms Wikipedia data to deliver insights on the pool stage of the Rugby World Cup held in Japan
  • Wales World Rugby rankings analysis - Tracks each movement Wales has made in the World Rugby Rankings since 2014. Employs some magic to make an inverse graph!

    • Information Management: Apps & Services

    A power user of both macOS (16 years) and iOS, I automate tasks using a variety of apps and services.

    Highlighting my preference for portability, information relating to how I integrate the services I use with each other, is presented in differing formats below.

  • myMindNode - An interactive, online mind map made with MindNode on macOS and iOS
  • Web page - Mind map above exported as Markdown and converted inline with this script
  • PDF presentation - Mind map exported as Markdown and converted to slides using Deckset
  • Dropbox Paper - Mind map exported as Markdown and rendered as an online outline
  • Workflowy - Mind map exported as OPML and published as an outline online

    • Todoist

    Ambassador

    I'm a long-time user of Todoist for task management. In recognition of me helping folk get the most out of it, I'm now one of a select band of Ambassadors for it. Here you'll find some tools and resources I've produced, specifically designed to enhance the Todoist experience. All are fully-documented to aid ease of use.

  • My own guide to the natural language syntax for Due Dates & Times in Todoist - Todoist's own website is far from exhaustive in detailing the natural language entries that can be used for setting due dates and times. I've documented the extra inputs I've learnt over the years keeping this webpage updated as and when I unearth further useful terms
  • Todoist Template Generator - This Google Sheet streamlines the production of project templates, also ensuring timelines can be changed dynamically before importing into Todoist. You can make your own copy of it here
  • Recurring tasks 'n' days from end of each month - You can use this Google Sheet to quickly and reliably create the syntax for recurring tasks that repeat on a cycle of a specified number of days before the end of each month. You can make your own copy of it here
  • Relative Due Dates Tool - A further development of the previous tool, this one overcomes some of the shortcomings of the recurring tasks natural language syntax by dynamically creating multiple due dates formatted for easy pasting-in to Todoist. You can make your own copy of it here