I’ve had conversations with quite a few people lately about pay wages and salaries.  Here’s the strange part: when asked what is a good wage, I would get answers like $13/hour or $17/hour.  On the other hand, when asked what is a good salary, I’d get responses like 50K, 60K, 75K.  I decided to make a little chart to show what wage will earn which salary.  The table below assumes 37.5 paid working hours per week over 52 weeks, and ignores taxes.

Wage/Hour -> Salary  

$ 10.00 -> $ 19,500.00 
$ 11.00 -> $ 21,450.00  
$ 12.00 -> $ 23,400.00  
$ 13.00 -> $ 25,350.00  
$ 14.00 -> $ 27,300.00  
$ 15.00 -> $ 29,250.00  
$ 16.00 -> $ 31,200.00  
$ 17.00 -> $ 33,150.00  
$ 18.00 -> $ 35,100.00  
$ 19.00 -> $ 37,050.00  
$ 20.00 -> $ 39,000.00  
……  
$ 25.00 -> $ 48,750.00  
$ 30.00 -> $ 58,500.00  
$ 35.00 -> $ 68,250.00  
$ 40.00 -> $ 78,000.00  
$ 45.00 -> $ 87,750.00  
$ 50.00 -> $ 97,500.00

It’s often the case that many beginning computer science students struggle with getting started.  Whether it’s programming or connecting to remote server, it seem that even Google fails to give us the results we want.

Stay tuned for new DataCrunch Canada online “Getting Started” tutorials!

Here are some resumé tips I’ve gathered over the years:

Resumé Tips

• Objective statement should be an objective!
• Bolds / underlines everywhere are annoying
• Include your expected date of graduation
• Include extracurricular activities, hobbies, interests
• Exclude list of courses

Cover Letters Tips

• Different from resume
• Mandatory for most jobs 
  • I went to [insert place] and learned more about [insert topic] and I am excited to work with you, etc
   

Other Tips

• Start job search in autumn, not January!
• Be specific about job details
• Payment negotiation comes later
• Ask the interviewer about themselves
• Leave thank you card at the end to security or someone
• Decline jobs ASAP when you have a accepted another job
• Online identity
  • “Google” your name and get rid of bad stuff online
  • Start blogging / tweeting
  • Referrals are important

It’s about time I said goodbye to Bell homephone services!  It seems to me like the prices just keep going up for no apparent reason.  Caller ID and Call Display was already a ripoff, but they just had to go and increase it!  Not only that, other services charges will be going up pretty soon too.

Good thing I made the switch to Primus Talk Broadband (I waited for the cheque from Bell before I switched).  With literally less than half the cost of Bell, but with more features and configurations to play around with, why didn’t I do this earlier?

Maybe it’s just me, but for some reason, I had a fear of having a VoIP phone service as oppsoed to a Plain Old Telephone Service.  But then, the only down side I could see is 911 calls are directed to a calling center (instead of local police), and services won’t work during blackouts.

But seriously, the chances of me calling 911 is extremely low, so this isn’t really a bad thing.  Also, you just need to plug the modem, router, and VoIP gateway into an uninterruptible power supply to use the phone during blackouts! 

With Rogers hi-speed internet and Bell home phone out of the way, the only thing left is Rogers Digial Cable.  The only thing I could think of is to watch everything online and getting an HD antenna (and no illegal satellites/boxes).

New services at DataCrunch Canada now include technical workshops:

• Introduction to Excel
• Intermediate Excel
• Advanced Excel
• Introduction to SAS
• Introduction to SPSS
• Introduction to R
• Introduction to Maple

Feel free to contact webmaster@datacrunch.ca to book an appointment today!

After learning serveral statistical software packages, I eventually stumbled upon Minitab.  It seemed to just as popular as other software like SAS, SPSS, and R.  To summarize my experience with Minitab for the past week, I present the following:

Here are some things you should know how to on Excel for an interview.  Be sure to familiarize yourself with the interface of both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 and up.

BASICS
1.  Open, Save As, Rename, Protect Sheet 
2.  Undo, Paste Special, Replace All, Sort, Filter
3.  Print Preview, Margins, Orientation, Freeze Panes

INTERMEDIATE
4.  Math functions: arithmetic, sum, sumproduct, mean, variance
5.  Formatting: Conditional formatting, decimals, currency, font, border
6.  Pivot tables, VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, absolute cell reference

ADVANCED
7.  Macros
8.  VBA Programming
9.  Data Analysis Tools, Solver

Want to live an honest life, but can’t afford to buy genuine software?
Here’s a list of alternatives you may want to consider:

Ubuntu
Windows -> Linux

OpenOffice.org
Access -> Base
Excel -> Calc
PowerPoint -> Impress
Word -> Writer
Photoshop -> Draw

Mathematics and Statistics
Maple / SAS / SPSS / S-Plus -> R
MATLAB -> Octave