DEV (fm-finance)

This site holds the exercises for Personal Finance: a Field Manual. Reading about the math is a good start, but the formulas stick once you work through them with real numbers. Each page here matches a chapter in the book. It opens with Book Topics, a short summary of the chapter, and then turns each math topic into practice.

1 How the exercises work

Every math topic starts with a bar model (a picture of the numbers) and then three levels of exercises:

• Level 1 (Guided): fill in the blanks of a finished formula.
• Level 2 (Practice): use the same formula on new numbers.
• Level 3 (Challenge): answer a new question with less help.

Each level has Excel, Python, and R tabs. Excel is included because it’s used in just about every organization, so it’s the tool you’re most likely to have at work. R and Python are included because both are open source (and free), so anyone can use them. You don’t have to learn all three; pick the tab that fits the tool you use now (or the one you want to learn).

The R and Python exercises run right in your browser, so you can try them without installing anything. Click Run Code to try an answer and Submit Answer to check it. If you get stuck, the hint and solution are there. The Excel exercises have a solution you can reveal.

2 Finding your way around

Use the sidebar on the left to pick a chapter. The sidebar also has a Resources section with two reference pages. Getting set up walks through installing R, Python, RStudio, and Positron on your own computer. Nobody needs these steps to do the exercises, since everything here runs in the browser; they’re for when you want to run the code locally. R vs. Python is a quick reference for the main differences in syntax and style between the two languages.