In between watching trailers for I Am Legend and raking leaves, I’ve been using Crystal Reports XI a lot lately. I mean really using it—OLAP cubes, Custom Functions, posting questions on the Business Objects message board—the whole nine yards. Somebody at work heard that I was pretty good with it and the next thing I know I have 40 complex reports to develop.

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Lately I’ve been doing some work with SIF data for a client. For those who don’t know (which seems to be just about everybody, including me up until earlier this year), SIF stands for School Interoperability Framework. It’s a new standard for exchanging educational data. You can learn the details here, or if you can’t sleep, here.

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This is not another article explaining various missing data techniques. This is a post about how to use them without getting an advanced degree in statistics or charming that nice young Data Analyst into doing it for you.

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A few days ago I discovered LibraryThing, a social networking site for booklovers. Think Myspace for bibliophiles. What a good idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Envy aside, I’m surprised—amazed really—that the site has been around for two years and this is the first time I’ve come across it. Google has some explaining to do.

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