Spreadsheets can be used for many applications from financial book-keeping to statistics. Spreadsheets are more than just rows and columns, a well designed spreadsheet should be “dynamic”. This feature of a spreadsheet means it will change and adapt according to the data input. If the data changes, so too does the results the spreadsheet calculates. To make this happen we use “formulas” and “functions”.

Formulas- A formula is usually used to calculate the result of a small number of cells by using mathematical “operators”. If a large number of cells is involved (a cell range) then formulas can become too long to be practical, this is when we use functions.

Functions- Functions are used to instruct the spreadsheet what to do with a cell range. Functions are words or abbreviated words, for example “SUM” adds the contents of a cell range and ”MAX” finds the highest number in a cell range. There are dozens of functions that perform a variety of calculations.

Have a look at the Spreadsheet Basics page for definitions of fundamental spreadsheet terms.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Year 7/8, Year 9. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.