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Author Archives: mathscinotes
US Battleship Fuel Usage
In this post, I will examine the fuel consumption of the three most modern battleship classes that the US deployed during WW2: South Dakota, North Carolina, and Iowa classes. The data is scraped from the Hyperwar website, which is one of my favorite targets for data extraction. In this case, the Hyperwar page contains a set of tables from the US Navy document FTP 218: War Service Fuel Consumption of US Navy Surface Vessels. Continue reading
50 Destroyer Pre-War Base Deal
This post is going to look at the Destroyers for Bases deal between the US and UK. The bargain was an executive agreement announced on 2-Sep-1940 to trade 50 WW1-era US destroyers to the UK for US basing rights in the Caribbean, Bermuda, and Newfoundland. I have seen the destroyers described as obsolete, which seemed odd for ~20-year-old destroyers that nominally have 30 year lifetime (typical for most US Navy ships). Continue reading
BB Ballistic Coefficients
A number of years ago, I was asked by a father to assist him and his son with a science project that involved calculating the ballistic coefficient of a BB gun projectile. I provide dthis father-son duo with the required calculations (documented here) and the answer I obtained seemed reasonable. Continue reading
Posted in Ballistics, Excel
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Optimized Piecewise Linear Model Using Excel
I was recently asked to create a piecewise linear model for a rather complex battery discharge curve, which is a type of task that I have performed dozens of times. I was told to perform this task in Excel because that is the only computation tool that this customer uses. I normally do this task in R because I like the segmented package, however, Excel does a very good job with the task, especially if you use the Solver add-in to "tune" the model. Continue reading
Posted in Batteries, Excel
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US WW2 Torpedo Production Chart Using Power Query
During my readings on the Pacific War, I often see the chart shown in Figure 1. I decided to do a bit of digging and find the source data for this chart in the hope of making a version of this chart that is a bit clearer and easier to use. Continue reading
18% of American's Can Determine 52 Senators?
I was listening to a podcast this week where I heard James Carville state that "18% of American's can determine 52 senators." I thought this was an interesting quote that I could have the students I tutor verify using Excel and Power Query. All of the data is available online and the problem has a relatively short solution. Continue reading
Posted in Civics Through Spreadsheets, Excel
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Willie Mosconi and How Pool is Like Life
I was talking with my neighbors yesterday about motivating students. They are both teachers at a local college and are finding it difficult to excite their students over Zoom. While I am not in education, many of the companies I have worked for have struggled to motivate staff (local and remote). My employers would occasionally have occasionally brought in motivational speakers to try to fire up the workers, most of which were good but not great (Lou Holz was great). Continue reading
Posted in Management, Personal
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Relative Cost of WW2 US Fighters
A reader of this blog mentioned in a comment that cost might be a big reason for the US Army Air Corps (USAAC) switchover to the P-51 from P-38s and P-47s. I thought I would put together a quick report on the relative cost of the three main USAAC fighters. The cost of these fighters by year was available in the Army Air Forces Statistical Digest (Hyperwar Site). The approach to Extracting, Transforming, and Loading (ETL) the data are the same as I used to determine the on-hand numbers of aircraft (link). For those who are interested in the details, my workbook is available here. Continue reading
Posted in Excel, History Through Spreadsheets
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Lake Water Temperature Report Using Power Query and FILTERXML
I have a cabin in northern Minnesota on a small lake where I have been staying isolated from the rest of the US while COVID rages around me. I track various lake metrics like height relative to sea level, clarity, and temperature. I gather this information into a report that I send to the other folks who live on the lake. In this post, I show how I put together a chart of lake water temperature vs time using Excel and Power Query. I also demonstrate how to use the FILTERXML function to parse some rather messy data. I find myself using FILTERXML for data parsing more and more. Continue reading
US Army Air Corp Fighters on Hand During WW2
Many years ago, at the start of my career, I worked with an excellent safety engineer who had served in WW2 as a fighter pilot in Europe with the US Army Air Corps (USAAC). You could tell that flying was the love of his life. Though we were working on naval weapons systems, our lunchtime talks often focused on his experiences flying aircraft during the war. His war service began in a P-47 (Figure 1) and his unit later transitioned to the P‑51 (Figure 2). Continue reading
Posted in Excel, History Through Spreadsheets, Military History
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