think-check away civil engagement lives here hello ha it's that time again time for condo insider the mighty show about living in an association about 38% of our population lives in an association and lots of owners and board members like to know more about doing a better job and that's what our show is all about I do want to take a moment and do a shout out to our police department first responders and fire department I've had to privilege the last let's say nine ten weeks of going to the Honolulu citizens police academy where you go through 13 classes and learn the challenges in this case of being a police officer I'm sure the firefighters and first responders have similar challenges but I can tell you from my experience our public safety we deserve or our police department deserves a lot of credit for their professionals and what they do it's a tough job it's a lot harder than one might think and I would encourage you to go on the Honolulu police department's website and look for the application to go to the Honolulu citizens police academy 13 weeks long major responsibility lots of time but you get to do a lot of cool and exciting things so again I want to thank our police department and all the first responders and fire department for keeping our community safe that being said I'm also annoyed today I'm annoyed because I can't stand it anymore I'm getting people continuing to call me talking about board meetings not being able to speak open board meetings secret meetings and everything else so I'm going to try one more time to try to help everybody understand what the law is and what the tensions are and I brought in my leading expert Nalan our attorney expert to talk to me about this welcome back to the show aloha everyone thank you for having me again you're tired of seeing me yet being on the show you do such a good job you know no always a pleasure to be back you know I must have to pay you to say that I mean either way and just tell everybody again briefly what you do besides being a mean attorney that beats up on everybody I'm a council with the law firm David Keeley on Cup Chuck Hastert we are a full-service law firm with deep roots on this island serving all Hawaiian you know residents myself I practice immigration law and condominium association law I you know actually actually I graduated from UH Law School and my first job you know out of law school is representing association since then I've been you know like trying to be the voice for our industry representing associations on all matters sort of serving as their general console providing legal opinions interpreting project documents handling collections for closures you know litigation dispute resolution yeah well you know I think it was last week maybe I do strike a time we've done over a hundred and fifteen shows believe it or not we had a member your firm tread Ireland here who talked about something I hadn't thought much about is when the insurance company turns down your claim kind of insurance coverage issues and he was quite fascinating and interesting you know but you have a really great firm broad-based and I appreciate you coming here and and trying to help me through this all right let's get into it yeah I told you I'm frustrated our boards required to have open board meetings and why yes all our condominium associations are subject to 514 be the statutory requirements if you have a file more units and one of the requirements is you you are supposed to have you know open board meetings and you know at least once a year we know the problem I see I hate to say that you know this 514 be also a most governing documents say you're governed by Robert rules of order or that's a part of your meeting conduct for lack of an order in Robert rules of order has a whole bunch of other stuff in there about the president's right to appoint committees and there's a term called the committee of the whole where a board as a whole meaning everybody can go meet as kind of a work session to kind of talk about things and I understand why that might be useful at times you know I get the sense that sometimes boards are are using that and say it's a committee the whole voting in the committee the whole and then just ratifying it at the next board meeting so there is no real discussion in public and there is no real vote in public other than quote the ratification of a prior vote how do you feel about that you cannot use the committee of a whole or these informal work sessions to try to replace a functional board meeting you know from the big picture you know there are different authorities garminy associations first you know that's the statue and then you have your governing documents decorations bylaws house rules and then you know there's Robert's rules of order when you know there's something that's not provided in your stat in the statue you cannot find anything you know in your project documents then you can try to look into Robert's room you know rules for guidance but if you know there is requirements there is provisions in your project doc or their statue provisions and they're conflicting with each other you should always you know the statue goes first you follow that and then you know you go back to your project documents you know the whole purpose of having board meetings is basically to have all members of the association you know have the right and access to learn you know how the project is wrong operated because you know this is everybody's project even you know being board directors you're just elected representatives to make it functional but you have the obligation to report back to your members and the board meeting via meeting minutes that provided a vehicle for everybody to be informed and also if you want to be more involved you have the right to do so as well so beside the statute let's just say is there a practical reason why you should have open board meetings as a board? Oh yeah definitely you know practically speaking I think you know the board meeting provides a good process for directors you know before you vote you discuss the rationale behind your vote and of course your former decision your voting results and everybody's vote will be recorded in the minutes you know for future if there's something getting into disputes you can always go back and you know of course you know you with D and O you you're familiar with board directors sometimes got sued you know there's also statute provisions talk about okay so if a matter is supposed to go to mediation you know the board deciding not to go to it and you know directors could be subject to personal liability but they're carved out a special exception there if somebody if some director voted differently and then you know that that's a safeguard for that safe harbor for that director so basically the minutes is a legal records of what happened what occurred you know it's really the legal records of how the associations decision were made and I hate to put it in these terms but I'll say it another way yes when you look at a board meeting you represent the owners who have elected you and those owners have standing because they bought in a condo they agreed to all the governing documents they paid a whole bunch of money and they have now become severally and permanently liable forever more to pay maintenance fees and they probably should have a say and at least the ability to see how the board conducts association business so it may influence how they might vote for someone in the future it allows them to understand more fully maybe the rationale of the board and why they're making that decision with the problems the association face because in some way they're indentured serve and say they don't have a choice once they bought there they got to pay and so since they got to pay they should have a right to know what's going on that's kind of how I look at it of course and you know it's not like this board can serve forever you also sort of use the board meeting to get more interested owners involved so that you can find candidates for your new board directors because without you know continuing people willing to serve on the board the association cannot function so basically it's also a good communication process you know under the statute owners have a right to you know attend board meetings except of executive session so yeah so be more transparent and that's the whole purpose of having meetings that's interesting I'm gonna be a speaker at a convention in San Francisco in on September 6th and I was asked to talk about our association industry and my title of my speech is a look into the future and around the corner and I kind of track and I hate to use the word study but I'm engaged and learning as much as I can about what's going on across the United States on managing associations and other states whatever it may be and the popular term today looking to the future it's called community engagement you know our whole way of community communicating with the community is changing particularly with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all these things I don't know how to use that our whole method but the whole concept behind it is to build a community through engagement and participation and I can't think of a better way than having open transparent board meetings that people can be engaged through that process to be a part of the board to the extent they're sharing input about the community to help the board make intelligent decisions so that's kind of how I feel about it but let's kind of get back to the basics of 514 b you know 514 a for those who don't know sunsets or dies or is repealed as of January 1 2019 which is a whole another story but pretty much a mature developer with unsold units or inherent in a unit or whatever it may be for the vast majority of 90% plus 514 a is gone as of of January 1 2019 that being said the 514 be part on condominium governance over 514 anyway so they're kind of stuck with it anyway so let's just go kind of review the open board meeting concept who can go to an open board meeting board directors members of the association or invited guest you know guest invited by the board so a tenant doesn't ever write to go to the board meeting unless you know they have an invitation that's right so if they're invited anybody can go yes but if they're not inviting they're not an owner or a member of the board but to be a member of the board you have to be an owner how about the association's lawyer or parliamentarian are they I guess they'd be invited guests they have they have no statutory right to go they have no statutory right or unless they own a unit there so right and so in theory if you went to a board meeting and the board president bought the lawyer or the parliamentarian with him and the board members said I objected that they held a vote the majority of the board can say they don't want the attorney or the parliamentarian as a guest but it sounds you know usually for I've seen like a pretty common for attorneys to go to these board meetings but for a parliamentary to go to board meetings that must be means there's something really contentious they're going on you know like for executive session of course you know that if they're so purpose is going to that you know maybe you know there's a way for them to only attending that session instead of you know sitting through the whole session if there is you know objection there but if if the board already made the invitation I don't think the owners have a right to exclude them and the owners wouldn't but yeah because we're going to go to a short break but it makes this one final comment before we move on to other subjects my final comment is I've gone to contentious board meetings with a board president surprised the board by bringing an attorney or parliamentarian wow and where the board members voted to not allow that person to be a guest okay and and they had to go so my point in summary is you're an owner and that includes the board member because you're a member or an owner you are entitled to go to any board meeting anybody else has got to be invited and be a guest and certainly proxies are not allowed of board meetings you have to be there in person so an owner does not have the ability to give a proxy to someone to attend a board meeting and on that day we'll come back with further discussion after our one-minute break and maybe I'll settle down from being angry from all these questions we're back I'm still angry maybe frustrated is the right word because I don't know how many times we've had to have shows about open board meetings and the right of owners to participate and I think it's true now that we the law was changed recently where when they published the board meeting notice they have to put the expected agenda and also they have to adopt meeting rules to allow owner participation is that right yes basically the new law expanded the owner's rights to participate in board meetings also specify that the meeting minutes has to include all the agenda items that are expected to be discussed at the meeting you know the board should also adopt owner participation rules so that you can still have the orderly meeting while you have more more members attending such meetings so on this notice it says this is the expected agenda for tonight does that prevent the board from having amending the agenda and doing something additionally for regular meetings you know things do change you know to be realistic of course you can't just strictly follow the agenda if there's something you know I expected that needs to be included in the discussion at the meeting it's okay to go ahead do that but you know there's another type of board meeting called special board meeting it's called for the specified purpose you need to strictly follow the agenda for those meetings you cannot you know deviated from that add on some other items so a special meeting is limited to the purpose of what you said you're going to do with the meeting a regular meeting even though you have the expected agenda on the notice the board could amend the agenda and add something that they learned since the posting is the posting is supposed to be 72 hours in advance of the meeting when practicable I think the statute says so I think the board could call an emergency meeting so long as they notified simultaneously all the owners as they notified all the board members so the 72 hours is more of the routine because you don't have those surprises too often you know so that's about meeting rules or participation for a second but I've always advised boards as follows certainly you don't want this to be a debate the shouting match and where it keeps you from doing your business the owner participation but what most boards do will say something as follows the next item on the agenda is discussing the paint color of the new building before we allow owner participation the board's going to discuss it first and maybe hear from a paint designer then we'll let the owners participate and ask questions or make comments so okay paint professional says the following Frank says this Susan says that I say this okay now we'd like to have the owners participation okay thank you for your vote you like a pink building I see your point you don't want to paint the building at all and now that we've heard from everybody we're going to take a vote boom and that owner who wants to fight with you you can say look I'm limiting you to three minutes to talking that subject but we're not here to have a debate we're here to receive your input but not get into an argument with you and frankly I hate to say from experience more times than not even though that participation rule may not be closely followed and people have an intelligent conversation owners participate when in fact you have a difficult situation by having owner participation rules and treating everybody equally under those rules you make the meeting just run more smoothly and you comply with the statute yeah and also make sure you remember to notify every owners in writing when you adopt to any new board owner owner participation rule because that's important you know if every time if you mend it you're supposed to give notice to owners again about what is the current rule is how about the famous you don't have a board meeting and I'm going to caught the email vote what do you think of email votes that should be avoided but sometimes you know it's sort of you know in order to you know to timely you know respond to emergency matters or important matters we've learned to short time fuse you sort of have to do it and then you know try to ratify at a later meeting but that could be dangerous as you mentioned before you know if you know a board member voted a certain way in email but later on change this mind then you know the part email vote is not going to be valid and what are you going to do with that especially if already you already signed a contract based on that so that's definitely not a good practice we wouldn't recommend board trying to conduct business in that way but if it's necessary then you know it can be used as a way to conduct you have to be cautious and how you use it because like I like you just said that email vote isn't binding until they go to the board meeting formally vote in a regular board meeting and person can change your mind then you're up a up the creek without a paddle if in fact people change your mind between the time of the email vote then you get in the argument that because I wasn't available and I didn't vote by email I would have affected the results of the vote to the extent that if they had heard my opinion they would have voted differently and now they're with the regular meeting and now they hear my opinion they're voting differently and now you've signed the contract you have a big problem that being said I've seen situations and being on the board of a condo I'll kind of generalize this where the board voted to approve a contract for $5,000 plus tax and after the boat was approved and the work was being scheduled the contractor came back and pointed out a hidden condition that wasn't included in the bid of $200 and so the real contract was to be $5,200 because of a hidden decision and they want to get this work done next week that the board can either a call a special meeting for the purpose of changing the amount or in this case the board says when was discussed by email let's just have a new motion at the next meeting and prove it for $5,200 not take the time because in a way it was de minimis it wasn't a big deal they needed to work needed to be done they had an open meeting they approve $5,000 plus tax and yes there was a hidden condition when they opened up the wall that wasn't anticipated that maybe they could have covered in the contract itself by saying hidden conditions are an additional fee and Frank the contract did say that but so it's a gray area but I can understand there could be some rare occasions where you may discuss something by email and some action you've taken knowing you're going to amend it a previous motion in a future meeting so I'm not going to say it's never done but would be very cautionary about it because a you're denying a person's right to be heard by having to debate at a meeting including the owners and B if you make a decision it turns out that the tide has changed they're not against it you indirectly as the board president who maybe was instigated this put the association in harm meaning you're personally in harm for violating the law and the documents yeah so hopefully I mean you know like I understand for like holding a special meeting the major concern may be trying to schedule it may be difficult but these days there's technology you know it's okay to call into a meeting you can also use new technologies like zoom you know you got a video conferencing everybody can see and hear each other at the same time so that makes finding scheduling meeting be more accessible easier for everybody to suit everybody's schedule instead of you have to physically be at the same place at the same time well because we're running out of time I want to discuss one more thing sure our minutes important oh yeah for sure why because it is the legal records of what occurred at the meeting it's supposedly to recording you know all the official voting results on the official motions you know basically that's the vehicle that you use to inform your members in writing all members in writing of what was conducted at the meeting and if you have five board members and three vote yes and two vote no you identify who voted yes and no in the minutes yes and why is that important you know like in the worst scenario if this matter gets into dispute it goes to court you have a clear record of who did what and then you know as goes back to my example of a mediation example you know you could get a safe harbor you know because you wouldn't know on that mediation matter you'll cover like so yeah a friend of mine told me they about a white civil rights commission complaint on a on an emotional support animal and essentially the board had approved emotional support animal but one board member during this process had written a handwritten note to the tenant and saying I don't like the fact you have a dog or something to that effect and so the tenant fought a civil rights commission complaint and what it got down to is he said she said and because they didn't put in the board minutes that the board approved the emotional support animal they ended up settling the case for some damages because they didn't have a clear record of their decisions yes and no yes so that's another reason why minutes are important right I want you to know I feel better now I was all angry and frustrated coming in looking at you and having you make me feel that I'm safe and we're all under control and I'm gonna thank you for being here and tell everybody here the great news the great news our show is about cannabis used to be called marijuana in my days but now the word is cannabis and so I'm bringing in one of the leading experts on cannabis and marijuana in condos who wrote an incredible article you all should read and her name is now on so you get to come back next week and talk about a different subject maybe we should have a discussion about whether the board when they vote if they're under the influences of cannabis whether that's a correct vote or not wow that's like it on that anyway thank you all for watching condo insider our show about association living I hope you enjoyed this show as an industry we appreciate bringing these topics before you so hopefully you'll learn something and we'll see you next Thursday at 3 o'clock with Nalan to talk about cannabis aloha


Statistics and Excel. Generating practice data in Excel. Get ready, taking a deep breath, holding it in for 10 seconds, looking forward to a smooth, soothing Excel. Here we are in just first a word from our sponsor. Well, actually, these are just items that we picked from the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program, but that's actually good for you, because these aren't things that were just given to us from some large corporation which we don't even use in exchange for us selling them to you. These are things that we actually researched, purchased, and used ourselves. Focusrite Scarlett Solo Third Gen USB interface with software suite. I've been using a Focusrite for years for my audio needs, before which time I had a USB microphone which plugged directly into the computer. But I think you'll find, as I have found, if you want to increase the quality of your microphone, you will need an interface, and the Focusrite is the go-to interface as far as I'm concerned. I've been using this for years now. It works well. It's easy to use. It seems quite durably built. Because I only do the screen recordings, I only need the one solo interface. However, if you have multiple microphones you need to plug in, or if you have other instruments you need to plug in, you can look at a similar model that has more input ports. If you would like a commercial-free experience, consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com where we have many different courses. You can purchase one at a time or have a subscription model, giving you access to all the courses, courses which are well-organized, have other resources like Excel files and PDF files to download, and no commercials. A blank Excel worksheet, we're going to be putting together a data set just within Excel so we can then use that data to apply and practice our statistical tools. In other words, oftentimes people might be thinking, I would like to practice my statistical analysis tools within Excel, like the average function, the median function, the core tiles. I would like to go into my insert tab up top into the charts group and then insert a histogram or a box in whiskers, but I don't have any data in order to do that. In many times that's actually a stopping point for people. However, it shouldn't be because there's many different resources we can use to get the data. I'm going to go back to the home tab as my default. One method, of course, is to go online and get data that we can apply these analytical tools to. Another method is just to make some data in Excel so we can just practice the tools that we want to be practicing with. And there's another advantage other than it just being easy to make a data set within Excel, and that is that when you download a data set, then what you're trying to do is apply your statistical tools in order to get some information about that data set. However, if you actually make your own data set, then as you make the data set, you'll be able to start to visualize what the statistical tools will give you as a result of that data set. In other words, if I make my own data set, I should be able to kind of start to visualize from how I create the data set, what the histogram and the box and whiskers is going to look like. And so you're kind of reverse engineering in that way, which could give you a better understanding sometimes. So I think it's a good practice to do for that reason as well. So we're in a blank sheet. Down here, we're zoomed in at 175. I'm going to zoom in a bit further by holding down control and up on the scroll wheel on the mouse. So now I'm at 235. I will typically start by formatting the entire sheet. This is what I do every time because otherwise you're going to get confused, right? So I want to format the entire sheet first. I'm going to select the triangle up top or you can select control A for the entire sheet, right click and format all the cells. So this is my underlying formatting. Now I usually go to currency and then I go to negative numbers being bracketed. I'm going to remove the dollar sign and I'm going to add the decimals back in. I took them off in a second ago, but I'm going to add them back in. So we're going to start with decimals. Now whether you start with decimals or not will be dependent upon the data sets you're working with. If you're rounding the numbers, the decimals aren't important, then you might take them off and then only add them when necessary. So I'm going to say, okay, that's my underlying formatting. Now if I need to change the formatting in a particular cell and make it a percent or something like that, then I can always go in and do that for that particular cell. All right, so now we're going to make our data set. So one of the ways we can do this is we can use the random function. So I could say this is a function. I'm going to say equals. I'm in cell A1, of course. Cell A1 equals means we're going to have a function and I'm going to type in RAND. And so it's R-A-N-D, selecting that. And then if I just close it up, notice there's not even an argument down here. It's just going to generate a random decimal. So there's my random decimal. And then I can select that and I can drag that down, putting my cursor on the fill handle. Now the fill handle is that little square. So if I put my cursor on the fill handle, I can drag it down. And if I double click on any of these, it now has put that same random function all the way down, right? It recalculates it. So if you want to lock, after you do that, once you want to lock this function so it doesn't keep changing, you can then copy your random function or select it and right-click and copy. And then put it somewhere else, right-click and paste it just the numbers. So now here you can see if I look at the formula bar, this one's just numbers. This one keeps on generating different random results. And then if I want these random results to be something other than decimals, then I can multiply them, right? I can say, okay, well what if I want it times 100, this times this. And now it's up to, now I can say this equals the one above it and then I can copy that down. And so then I can copy this down, right? So now I have a randomly generated set of numbers between zero and 100 in essence. I think that's basically the general idea of this. But obviously when I, so I can then apply and I can, if I wanted to change this to 200 or something like that, then I can do that or 1000. I can use that random generator tool. So that at least gives me a set of numbers that I can start to play with, right? So I can start to now do my average function. So I could go over here and say equals the average and there's my function. I'm going to double-click on the function. So remember whenever we do these functions, I hit equals, type in the function brackets, and then I'm just going to select this range. And that's going to help me to calculate the average. I could double-check that if I wanted to do it manually, right? I can say, well this equals the sum. So now this is the famous sum function. Have to know that one. Most important function is all of this. And then I can divide it by the number. I can do that with account equals the count function. I want you to count the number. There's my count of these. How many are there? Should be eight, right? I can see it right here. And then I can divide this out equals.  So now it equals what's in G2, G2 divided by this one, G4. So take the 3111.09 divided by eight, or take what's in G2 divided by what's in G4 will give us that average. So again, we can kind of play with these numbers. Now, because we generated them randomly, we start to think about, we can kind of think about what exactly we're going to get as a result. So let me give you some more examples of this. I'm going to clean this out. I'm going to select, I'm going to put in my cursor on A1, and I'm dragging over to G8. Notice that this cell range, I can name with just two cells. It's A1 through G8. And because it's all one big box, I only need those two cells. I don't need four points to name this range. I only need two points. So just keep that in mind because that's what the cell references will do. So I'm going to delete this. And let's say I want random numbers between a certain set of numbers. Let's say I just want random generated numbers between one and five, right? Just one and five. So I'm going to say this is going to be equal RAND and then BETWEEN. RAND BETWEEN. And now I have my arguments here. So I want between, this is a RAND array. Hold on a second, RAND BETWEEN. This is the one I want. RAND BETWEEN. I've got my argument on the bottom and the top. So the bottom, I want it to go to one. I don't want to go below one. And then if I hit a comma, that takes me to the second argument. So how high do I want it to go? I want it to go to five. And then I close up the brackets, CTRL, SHIFT, 0. That's my argument. So it should give me something between one and five now, right? So one and five, it gives me a three. Or you might do it like one and let's do one and six. I'm going to double click on it, go to the end of it. And that would be like a dice, like we're rolling a die, right? Between one and six. And so now if I copy that down and I put my cursor on the fill handle, drag it down. So now you've got our numbers between one and six. Now these are all equally outcome like a dice rule, right? So you would expect that because they're all equal, that you're going to get... If I copy this all the way down, if I did it a whole bunch of times, that you would have something that's going to be somewhat evenly distributed. What I'm going to do now is enter a histogram to get a visual sense or idea of the spread of the data. We'll talk about histograms more later. But for now, let's select the data so I can put my cursor on A1 and drag all the way down. That's one way I can select the data and then I'd have to let close the click, scroll back up. Another way we can select the data is to put our cursor on A1, hold down control and shift at the same time, and then the down arrow on the keyboard. So that's a great tool. You don't have to do it that way, but if you have a lot of data, that could be useful. Now we're at the bottom, we're down here on row 59. I don't really want to enter the histogram down here because if I do, it'll be down here somewhere and I want it at the top. So then I'll have to drag it back up to the top. So to get back up to the top without unselecting the data, you could do that with a keystroke by holding down control and then the backspace. Not delete, but backspace. So now the data is selected. I'm at the top of the sheet. Now I'm going to go to the insert tab up top. I'm going to go to the charts and then we're going to enter a histogram. So hit the histogram and there we go. Now this gives us kind of like a bucket and summarize the data in buckets. So it gives us a default of between one and 2.4. I want to have a spread of just one since there's only five data sets. So I'm going to double click on this data. We'll talk more about how to do this in the future, but I'm going to change this bin and I'm going to change it to just one. And so there we have it. So now you've got the bins. Now we could get a little bit more specific and we might have been able to enter just like a bar chart since there's only five items here. But the general idea is that you have a spread of the data, which you would expect would be somewhat even because if you ruled a die a bunch of times, then each number you would expect to come up somewhat evenly. That's the general idea here, right? So whenever you use a random generator, you're going to get numbers that you would expect if you looked at the spread of the data would be somewhat even. And usually what we're trying to do when we're trying to do statistics is compare something that's going to have an even spread to something that doesn't have an even spread. So for example, if the die was rigged or something like that, and let's say it was rigged to have a six a lot of times, that you would expect that you're going to get a skewed kind of answer that has a skewed towards, you know, the six. Say, let's keep randomly doing this and so on. So now you can say, hey, there's something wrong with this die, right? Because now it's skewed. I expect it to be somewhat the same, but there's a skew to it. And that seems odd, right? Is this weighted, what is going on? So we'll talk more about that later, but you can get an idea, like if you make your own data sets, what the general output would be in the data. Now let's do this a different way. I'm going to delete this whole row. I'm going to put my cursor on the A, select it, right click, and delete that column. Let's say we're talking about salaries, right? Let's say we're talking about salaries and I say this is going to be equal to random between, between, and let's say that we're going to say the salaries are going to be somewhere between a bottom of like 60,000 and a top of comma top 80,000, right? So now if I, that's 8,000, 80,000. So now if I select this, it's going to give me randomly between there. Now I'm thinking that more likely, you know, that the middle would be around, you know, 70,000 or something, right? This is the top and bottom. So this wouldn't give me a spread that I would think would be kind of normal to a, to, to like a, an institution, but it will at least give me a starting point, right? So I can say, okay, that it gives me 77, 151. Now if I was going to build my data set, I could say, well, let's copy that random generated number down. So there we have it. Okay. Now each of these, I believe is independent of the, of the one above it. So each one is like rolling a new die, right? So, and remember that if you want to preserve this data set, you probably want to copy it and then hard code it. So let's say, let's say that I take this, this data set and I say, I say, okay, let's copy it and put it right here. I'm going to paste it one, two, three, pasting it just with the values because every time I do something that changes on this side, right? So now this is, this is the first one that we did. Let's color coded. So I'm just going to cut, put a color around it and that was just randomly selected. Now if I make a histogram based on that, selecting this data, insert histogram and I'm going to hold down control, scroll down a bit. And let's delete this and let's change the bucket size. So bucket size. And I'm going to say the bucket is like a change of 1000. Let's say.  And you've got this pretty wide spread of bucket ranges and, and any, any numbers equally likely to come up. So you don't have a really a center to the data. What if I wanted to try to create a data set that did have a center to it, right? I could say, okay, well that's, that's the full range. I would think the middle, I can create another, another data set here. Let's go from here and say this is going to be Rand and it's going to be between the middle. I'm thinking is going to be between like 70 or let's say between like 68000 and comma 72000. Right. That's going to be like the middle range. And I can say, okay, let's copy that down. And now I've added some that are kind of in the middle. I'll make that like green and let's copy that. I'm going to copy that data set and I'm going to put paste it 123 just the values so it doesn't keep generating. And now if I selected this entire data set, I might have something that approximates more of what I would kind of expect with like a center centering point, right? So I'm going to go to insert charts histogram. And so now we can say, okay, let's take this data set and say that it's going to be spread of 1000 again 1000 on the spread. And so now you've got something, you know, that's a little bit more towards the middle of it, right? So now you've got something that's starting to approximate something in the middle. Let's say, let's say I drag this down further. So you've got more that's kind of in that middle section. And then I'm going to copy this copy this and paste it 123 make this whole thing green. And then I'm going to double click on this data set. And I'm going to drag this down. We'll talk more about charts later. I'm just trying to get an idea to show an idea. You know, how the how your different data sets see now you got something that looks a little bit more like it's centered, right? So this is just a general concept of how we can generate our own set of numbers within Excel that we can then apply our statistical tools to and how we can in essence reverse engineer something like the creation of a histogram, for example, as we generate our data set. And you might be thinking, well, that's cheating. You're teaching us how to cheat so that we can create a data set that makes the graph look like what we want to look like. But no, it's not cheating. When we're practicing trying to understand something like deconstructing a motor in order to understand how an engine works isn't cheating. What we want to be able to do is say, hey, if I can create a data set that will then populate a histogram like the one I envisioned in my mind, then when I apply those same statistical tools to other data sets and it creates histograms, I'll have a better conceptual understanding of what is actually happening so I can make decisions based on what is going on. And this is often illuminating the people because people often have misconceptions of what the data will look like when you plot it on a histogram. Like, for example, if you plotted this random data up top and I just took a random sample, that's what this is basically doing between a certain set of numbers, or like when we had the one between one and six and we took a random sample between one and six. A lot of people would say, well, if you did that a bunch of times, then you would think that the histogram should look kind of like a bell curve, similar to this less like this, which looks more like a straight line kind of thing. And that shows kind of a disconnect of what is actually happening. So if you think that way, if that's what you thought you say, well, hey, it should look like a bell curve because you took a random sample, then that's not exactly right. We'll talk more about that in future presentations of why that would be the case. But if you can get to the point where you build your data set and you can actually say, this is going to result in a bell curve, a bell shaped distribution, or this is going to be a skewed distribution because I built it that way. I know where the outliers are going to be. Well, then you have a better sense of how to read the histogram because you've reverse engineered it. In any case, we'll dive into more histogram creation in future presentations.


Paystubs What is a pay stub? A pay stub is a record of hours worked taxes paid other deductions sick and vacation leave Example pay stub Pay stubs will look a little different, but the same basic information is there pay period Pay periods can be one week two weeks or one month hours 40 hours a week is full-time less than 40 hours is regular hours More than 40 hours is called overtime income Gross income or pay is the total money you are paid Net pay is the total after deductions Social security and Medicare Social security and Medicare are common deductions Social security is also called OASI taxes Everyone pays federal income tax. Some states do not have income tax leave Some jobs give workers paid days for sick leave and vacation time insurance Some jobs pay for health or medical insurance and life insurance Which pays money to the family if the worker dies the end


Today on The Journey, we're going to talk about how to improve local rankings on Google My Business. Google My Business page, don't have one. Get one, this should be a number one priority for your business if you have a physical location. It's key to showing up in local business searches because it doesn't matter if someone is in Dallas, Texas, and they need a coffee and they find your coffee business that's in Tampa, Florida. You need people who live, work, eat and breathe and spend time near your physical location to be able to search and find your business. And thankfully, we're here to explain, well, mostly Emma, you're thankful for, on how to make changes to start showing up in local business searches. So Emma, what are local business searches? Local business searches, we're going to be talking about Google algorithms, which Google algorithms are designed to give people the most useful and relevant info as possible. I'm a huge fan. Just as you don't want your Tampa coffee shop business to show up in a search result for that person in Dallas, Google doesn't want a Dallas searcher to see the results for a business in Tampa. It goes hand in hand. So Google has designed its search algorithm to show local results to searchers based on their location. And these results show up in multiple ways. Organic search results are unpaid listings that appear on search engine result pages or SERPs because the website has strong SEO. Paid search results are listings that appear in SERPs as paid advertisements through search engine marketing. Google My Business results, on the other hand, are featured rich search results that highlight businesses that have Google My Business pages. And Google Guaranteed listings are results featured on search engine result pages that are part of the Paid Google Guarantee program. So if you want your business to show up in local search rankings, which I know you do, that's why you're here, you can start by optimizing your Google My Business page to be more relevant and be more prominent. Here are a few ways to do that. The first step to improve your business's local ranking using Google My Business is to create or claim your business information. And then from there, you want to enter complete data. Yes, all of it. Local results, they favor the most relevant results for each search. Businesses with complete info and accurate info are easier to match with the right searches, which makes total sense, right? So just make sure you've taken all the information about your business and have completed it on the Google My Business page. Plus, then users will know what you do, where you are, what time of day they can visit you. So that would be why you want to provide information such as physical address, phone number, the category in which you fall under, and also any attributes. You'll also want to verify your business location so that they're more likely to show up in local search results across Google products like maps and search. Also, be sure to keep your hours accurate. It seems like a no-brainer, but I've gone across town for a slice of pizza and the Google My Business page said the pizza joint was open.  And I was devastated. So be sure to keep that information as up to date and as relevant as possible. If there are changes to your business hours, make sure it's reflected there. Update it regularly, including your open and close, your special hours, holidays. That's another big one. I'm always going to a Google My Business page to ensure like, hey, you know, it's St. Patrick's Day. Who's open? So make sure that's all accurate and it will give your customers more confidence that your business will be open when they arrive, unlike when I went to go get pizza. Super frustrating, right? And all you wanted was the pizza. But another thing you can do when it comes to optimizing your pages is to manage and respond to reviews. So respond to reviews that users leave about your business. They took the time to give their two cents, whether good or bad. But when you reply to reviews, it shows that you value your customers and their feedback. High quality, positive reviews from your customers can improve your business visibility and increase the likelihood that a shopper will visit that location whether it be that same shopper or someone just perusing on Google search and ends up finding your business. That's so true, Naly. I always look to see if the business is actually responding to their customers. To me, it's a quick indicator of what their customer service is going to be like. And I also can kind of get a sense for the type of business it is, their voice, right? Their brand. So it's something I always spend time looking at when checking out reviews. Another tip, add photos. Now I'm a huge visual person, so when I'm choosing a new salon or a new dentist or even where to take my car to get repaired, I want to see photos of the business, the inside, the goods, the services. Tell the story of your business and what a great way to do that with photos. Plus, accurate and appealing pictures may also show shoppers that your business offers what they're searching for. I know that's helped me out as a consumer in the past. In addition to updating your Google My Business page, here are a few more things that you can do to help boost those rankings right now. So optimize your homepage's meta title and description. You use meta tags to tell search engines more about a webpage. You also use them to tease the pages to searchers as this is the information that they see when they view your website and local business searches. Optimize both the meta title and description on your homepage to target for keywords for your business and the city where you're located. And make sure all other SEO elements are in place. While there are unique tactics to help your website improve its local SEO search engine optimization, you can't forget about the other SEO elements. I know having strong onsite as well as offsite and technical SEO is key to getting your brand to show up in a local business search ahead of your competition. So focus on creating search-friendly onsite content, getting links back to your site, and meeting technical SEO requirements to improve your local search rankings. Another thing to consider is launching paid ads or Google guaranteed placements. All the other tips in this roundup are designed to help you peer more promptly in organic search results and Google My Business placements. But you don't have to rely on just these methods alone. If you're struggling to boost your organic local search visibility, consider launching these paid options either through Google Ads or Google Guaranteed Program to get your business closer to the top of these search engine result pages.  Use these tips to optimize your online presence and help you show up when an interested customer is ready to spend money with a business like yours. All right, that's a wrap. You just learned how to improve your local ranking on Google My Business. Be sure to comment below and like this video. And while you're there, subscribe to this channel and ring that bell to get these episodes first. This is The Journey. We'll see you next time.


Okay, today's Fountain Pin unboxing is a collaboration between Visconti and Jonathan Brooks of Carolina Pin Company. This USA resin manufacturer is really popular and he came out with the two resins in this fountain pin collection. You have the Visconti logo there on the finial and the silver and this is the trimmer silver for the Unicorn Galaxy. The Visconti bridge clip, that's very popular, and then you have a newly designed center ring with the Visconti logo. The hook and twist cap closure, get a good look at it there. And this material, this resin is semi-translucent so that's kind of a fun addition to the design. It is numbered there on the bottom, you can see the number there. And then let's get a good look at this nib. It's a Visconti branded engraved 14 karat gold nib and obviously it's plated to match the trim. I think I forgot to say the collection name. This is the Visconti Kaleido collection and there's going to be two colors. The second color has been delayed so Unicorn Galaxy is this color and it's the only one I have to show you today. But it is really beautiful and as soon as we get the second one I'll make sure to put up another video. The Visconti Kaleido collection are going to be power fillers and you access the mechanism by the back end of the barrel there. The Carolina Pin Company resins are shipped to Italy where each of the pins is hand turned by Visconti's artisans in their Florentine factory. If you want more information on these new releases from Visconti visit pinch.ly.com


this is a 360 camera live streaming over Wi-Fi right here this is a single lens 360 solution so let's do the interview here so we have sunshine hello hi Nicholas so you have new 360 solution yeah this one and this is a single lens single lens what's it be you inside all-winner v3 and you have some connectors on the side there yeah this is a micro sd card reader micro USB mini HDMI and there's some button for taking pictures starting the video yeah and the menu stuff and display so this is the all-winner v3 and it can support 4k oh yeah 4k 4k at 30 FPS really yeah so your engineers doing very good software yeah yeah full 30 FPS 4k okay on the all-winner v3 yeah and a smart PMU low power consumption what does it mean you have very low power consumption to two hour battery life on 1000 milliamp 512 megabyte ram and what is the lens solution Sony Sony so it's a 220 degree yeah vertical and horizontal 360 and two different design it's only different color different design same chipset same function different color different buttons yeah yeah and what's the price below $70 below $70 for 4k 360 camera yeah yeah well that's cool and over here you have can you show this solution you have a all-in-one VR solution you make the PCB you show those okay so what is a CPU this is our owner H8 this is a real cheap arcade 3288 and this goes directly in the VR this is for VR solution yeah and we can see the open VR you have one that's here so this is all in one VR with the display and the PCB battery and a long battery life how long battery life a bunch of hours and this is the final product look like this yeah so that's all in one VR with a rock chip and the opener two solution oh yeah so 3288 quad core and cortex a 17 with Mali T764 is good for games that's 2 gigabyte ram and Android 5.1 and then you have the cortex a 7 octa core H8 solution with power VR GPU at what kind of price we talked about here but below 150 dollars for 1000 units below 150 yeah with a good display yeah what kind of display you have 5.5 1080 display so it looks good and it's not too heavy and this is what you do you do the full VR solution from camera to VR headset yeah two devices work together all right it's perfect combination yeah perfect package so people can buy everything from sunshine yeah