How to Manage Numbers Using Spreadsheets

Dealing with data related to your business can be a heavy burden on you, especially if there is a lot of it. Spreadsheets allow you to break that data into useful information, and it can save you a lot of time in the process.

Throughout this article, we'll cover the benefits of using spreadsheets, introduce you to basic functions, and explain how these functions can be used to help you manage specific data. So, let's start with the basics:

What is a spreadsheet?

 

A spreadsheet is an interactive software application model, designed to help organize, analyze, and store data. Simply put, spreadsheets create a grid of information using the principle of rows and columns.

Once you add the numbers to your spreadsheet, you can use automated tools and tasks to analyze the information and find the answers you're looking for.

Spreadsheet programs, such as Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, or Apple Numbers, are all incredibly useful when dealing with a large amount of data, such as financial budgets, project plans, and databases.

For example, if you are responsible for collecting census information for a city, you can use a spreadsheet to track addresses, names, dates of birth, and how long residents have lived in the city.

Then you can apply a limit filter to the number of people under the age of four which will provide valuable information to consider when planning school capacity.

 

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Key features to make spreadsheets more useful

 

• The information can be presented in a number of ways, for example, you could produce a graph highlighting the city's population by gender or a table showing the different age groups that frequent local sports clubs.
• Filter tools allow you to quickly organize your data in a specific order, whether it's alphabetically or by date. Not everything in a spreadsheet is just a regular number. Percentages, currencies, dates, and periods are some of the most common items you can use based on your data.
• Use functions to instantly recalculate values ​​if data changes. If we apply this to the census example, a formula can be created that calculates the average life expectancy in a city at any point in time. There are a lot of formulas and functions built into spreadsheets; Many basic formulas and functions are available in all popular spreadsheet programs.

Some functions of value

 

Let's look at some functions that can help you organize and make valuable census data.

1. The sum function (SUM) lets you calculate the sum of the cells of two or more data tables. This is useful if you want to know the total number of people in the city.
2. The average function (AVG) calculates the average of the given numbers. It can be used to calculate the average life expectancy of city residents.
3. To calculate how often something happens, you can use the COUNT function for example, counting the number of people who have lived in the city for 3 years or less. This may give you a good indication of how many people are moving into the city.

Summary

 

Now that we've seen how spreadsheets can help you manage and analyze your data, you can explore how you can use them in your business scenario.

Learn about functions that can save you time, and spreadsheet functions that can make your data and statistics more useful.

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