1. Introduction
I’ve yet to meet a spreadsheet that didn’t have a story to tell.
More often than not, they are bursting with those stories.
Some have stories of success and (often more interestingly) failure. Others can hold a mirror up to ourselves, and tell stories about where we’ve been, and where we’re going; how we’ve changed, and how we’ve stayed the same.
Some spreadsheets will shout stories of alarm, while others whisper about curiosities we might have otherwise missed. Some will tell stories about secrets. Some will tell stories about lies.
The key to all these stories, as with all sources, is knowing what questions to ask.
This book is about those questions.
In fact, it is full of those questions, in the language that spreadsheets understand. They include questions like:
- How much has something changed?
- Who or where experienced the most change? Who changed the least?
- Which company or person got the most money?
- What is typical - and who stands out the most as being atypical?
- How often does a name appear? Where?
- Can you show me just the parts I’m interested in?
- How much was spent in total on something?
- Have I got things right?
- Where is information missing?
- What is unusual in this data?
- Where should I be looking?
Some techniques in this book are about helping the spreadsheet get into a position where it can answer questions it couldn’t answer before: breaking dates down into years or months, extracting regions or names, for example, or combining it with other sets of data.
If you are new to spreadsheets you can read the book in the order it’s written, with each chapter building on concepts and techniques introduced in the chapter before, plus a number of exercises and questions to give you spreadsheet experience alongside exercising your editorial muscles - the latter is just as important as the technical skills if you’re going to be telling stories.
But the book is also written for those who already have spreadsheet experience: you can dip into chapters like a recipe book to find the chapter that tackles the question you want to ask. And once you’ve read it the first time, it’s designed to be used again and again that way.
For that reason, please don’t approach the book as something to be ‘memorised’ from beginning to end - it is better to remember what’s possible in general with spreadsheets, and play with the techniques that are useful to you.
Then, when you need to do something particular, you will know you can find it in these pages.
The more often you use particular techniques, the more they will be retained in your memory, and the less you will need to refer to this book.
Oh, and if you have a question which isn’t answered here, let me know and I’ll try to update the book.
Later I will tackle some useful tips and techniques when getting to know a spreadsheet. But first, let’s get stuck in with some basic calculations.