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Spreadsheets & Continue Reviewing, Thursday 1/21

I'm tired and this is really funny


Anyway. Today you are going to learn about SPREADSHEETS!
YAY!

"What are spreadsheets?" you ask?

Behold!
...it's a grid of boxes, called "cells".

"But wait!" you naively protest, "that isn't exciting or interesting!"

Ok, I grant you it may not be exciting, but it is interesting. Spreadsheets are oddly powerful. They changed the face of commerce since their widespread adoption in the 1980s (there's a good podcast about that that we can listen to sometime if we have extra time)


Spreadsheets count as a programming language, and are the most widely-used one. The vast majority (>90%) of companies use spreadsheets. And finally:

They do all the work for you!

Can you imagine how much you have to add, subtract, multiply, divide, calculate means, etc when you are running a business? You pay for things, you sell things, but the price of things change. What will the thing you are buying cost tomorrow? Next week? How much do you have to sell it for? Can you afford to give every salesperson a Raise. Why do you sell more of Thingy1 on Fridays, except at Store9, where you sell more of Thingy1 on Tuesdays. How could you possibly look at all that the information needed to figure that out? With a spreadsheet.

OK, enough build-up

Let's actually use one.

Starting process:

  1. Go to drive.google.com
  2. Sign into Google.
    1. If you don't have an account, we can make you one. You can use fake information
  3. Click the red "NEW" button, then find the option that says "Google Sheets"
  4. You have a spreadsheet!

Baby steps:

  1. enter a number in the upper left, cell A1
  2. enter another number below it, in cell A2
  3. enter yet another number below that one, A3
  4. in the cell below your last number, A4, write the following: =SUM(
  5. then click the first number, then hold down the 'shift' key and while holding it, click the last number
    1. It should say =SUM(A1:A3
  6. hit enter
  7. Now cell A4 displays the sum of cells A1 through A3. It could have just as easily multiplied, and it could have handled a few thousand numbers instead of three.
  8. In A5, find the product of cells A1 though A4.
  9. In A6, find the mean of cells A1 through A5 (hint: use AVERAGE, not MEAN).
Are you starting to see why this is so useful? Show me when you have completed this. BTW, anything after an equals sign is a FUNCTION. If a cell has a function in it, it doesn't show the function, but rather, it shows the answer the function gets. If you write "=SUM(10,5)" it will show "15", for example. Functions can get very complicated...

Finally go to your classwork/homework spreadsheet, "Possible Cars for my Growing Family". You have to use the information I put together and a formula that you come up with to help me pick a car to buy. For real.

For homework, do

  • Finish the Possible Cars for my growing Family spreadsheet
  • Finish any review problems from this list:

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