Before this project started, I enjoyed scented candles as much as the next person - well, maybe a bit more than the next person - but the thought of taking measurements had not yet crossed my mind. As I’ve mentioned, I wanted to increase my Excel skills, and candles just so happened to be there. The very first candle I measured was one from Paddywax Apothecary, probably because it was the most recent candle I had purchased. The scent was Patchouli and Tobacco, and it’s one of the candles in my first presentation, so I’m sure I’ll have a separate post about it somewhere down the line. While I don’t burn candles every single day anymore, at the time, I was deep into my new obsession and quickly went down the data-gathering rabbit hole. Soon, I had recorded information about burn times, price, and weight from five different candles, and it was time to start making some of my favorite things - charts and graphs.
With the data I had imported into Excel, I started playing around with charts and graphs during my free time (and to be honest, when things were slow at work). I was at the stage in a new skill or hobby where the first leaps were relatively big ones - “I figured out how to apply custom formatting to this chart!” - and those types of discoveries kept me interested and excited to keep going. I soon had charted performance information on five different scented candles and I put together a PowerPoint presentation to pull it all together. The timeline gets a bit tricky here as I can’t exactly remember whether I created the presentation specifically for a Toastmasters speech, or I had it ready and waiting. Either way, I think the presentation I gave to my Toastmasters group served as a sort of signal boost. If I hadn’t passed around candles in that small conference room, I might have just left “Candle Burn Times” as a self-contained PowerPoint/PDF file, and gone no further with it.
These are the beginnings of my very first candle spreadsheet. I have noted that I only have estimated times for the first four entries. I can’t remember exactly why I don’t have exact timestamps, but since then I’ve become a lot more detail-oriented. I wasn’t even measuring temperature, humidity, or dew point back then. To tell the truth, I’m not sure how I’m using those data points now, but I figure that I have them so I might as well record them. As I get further into this project, perhaps I’ll be able to identify trends or work them into my General Theory of Scented Candle Value (or GTSCV, if you will). My Excel organizational skills are also still developing at this point. I probably didn’t need separate columns for each of my static data points, such as price and weight. You might also notice that my Volume Filled (Cb. Ft.) column is completely blank. That was an attempt to measure the throw of the candle with any type of objective measure, which is something that continues to elude me. I had plans to include it in my GTSCV, but now I recognize that I need to go about it differently. The website for the company Boy Smells has a ‘Scentensity’ metric listed for each one of their candles; perhaps I should reach out and ask how they’ve figured it out.
As you can see above, my first charts were very basic. I was just using the built-in designs from Excel and pasting them into PowerPoint and PDF files. I had no plans on using more powerful data visualization software such as Tableau and didn’t know anything about SQL. I wasn’t even using pivot tables yet. Still, I was excited to develop my skills and present my findings to others. I had a Toastmasters speech coming up and hadn’t made much progress on the original subject I had in mind, so I decided instead to put together a presentation entitled Candle Burn Times: A Study on Value Proposition and use that. I talked about my methodology, compared of the five brands I had measured so far, and passed around examples of each. Unlike my previous Toastmasters speeches, I didn’t write out a script beforehand, instead just going over the information on the slides. It was far from a perfect speech or presentation; I stumbled over a few of my words, some of which were wrong, and went over the designated time. Still, it was one of my most memorable Toastmasters presentations, and I was proud of not only what I was able to create but also the energy I brought to the room.
Now that I had a rudimentary understanding of data recording and visualization, I wanted to continue my studies in the field. However, I thought I was mostly done with candles. That all changed when I spoke with my manager at the time, Frank. I told him that I wanted to continue to grow my data analysis skills, and showed him my Candle Burn Times PDF as an example. He reviewed it, and one of the first things he did was tear apart my “methodology”. If you’ve read it, no doubt you know that he was correct. I think it worked for my simple and silly presentation, but it was in no way a legitimate method for research. Being Frank, fortunately, he didn’t just tell me how terrible it was but gave me suggestions on how to construct an actual methodology for future research. He also asked me if measuring candles specifically was something that I wanted to continue because I had mentioned in a previous meeting that I had wrapped it up. I took a moment to think about it and said that I would like to continue. I may have not had my heart 100% in it at the time, but I’m glad I picked it back up.
As a result of the feedback Frank gave me, I created a project plan for 2022:
While I did not meet all of my stated goals, having a plan like this helped me to see my progress, and I was more productive as a result. I created a new spreadsheet, Candle Burn Times 2022, and I’m still working out of it, although I’ve also expanded to Google Sheets, SQL, and Tableau. Still, I’ll get into more details about those additional tools in a future post. I haven’t yet made a project plan for 2024, but I imagine it will look similar, and this blog entry is a good reminder to myself to do so.
I’m hesitant to make any promises about what my next entry will be, but I want to discuss the actual performances of individual candles, and I’m excited to talk about my favorite brands. I also have more to talk about regarding my educational journey into data analysis. Stay tuned!