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LABORATORY 15
Spreadsheets

OBJECTIVE
■■ Learn some of the basics of a spreadsheet program.

REFERENCES
Software needed:
1) A spreadsheet program (preferably nonmobile versions of Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, ■
or Numbers for Mac)

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BACKGROUND
Two major types of programs used in managing information are spreadsheets and
databases. Both of these types are represented by a huge variety of products. Some
spreadsheet programs even incorporate simple database functions.
This lab focuses on the spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel, which is widely used
and available on both the Mac OS X and the Windows platforms. Other programs, such
as the spreadsheet program Calc in Open Office, Numbers for Mac, or Google Sheets,
implement many similar, and sometimes identical, features to what will be shown in
this lab.

ACTIVITY
While this lab uses Microsoft Excel to introduce spreadsheets, most spreadsheets are very
similar. If you are using a different program, you may have to make minor adjustments,
probably in the names of formulas. Check with your lab instructor or with the program’s
online documentation for more details.

To begin, start Microsoft Excel. A blank worksheet will appear. (The version shown
here is from Office 2013, but the features we use are nearly identical in other versions.)

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Textbooks and online documentation contain all the necessary terminology about
cells, formulas, ranges, and functions. Starting in cell A1, type in the data about fictitious
pets shown below. Notice that some of the data are numerical and some are textual:

Oops! We forgot something. We need to know at a glance how old our pets are so
we can buy the right kind of food and take them in for the proper shots. Let’s insert
a column between birthyear and weight. Click once on the D column header. This
highlights the entire column. Then pull down the Insert menu and select Insert Sheet
Columns (or an equivalent option).

Don’t just type the ages in! They can be calculated by subtracting the animal’s
birth year from the current year. To tell Excel that you are entering a formula that will
compute a value, rather than typing the value in directly, start with an equal sign. That
doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but it is the traditional way to distinguish a
formula from a value in most spreadsheets. As shown in the screenshot below, type the
formula =2015-C3 into cell D3 of your spreadsheet.

Press Enter to finish entering the formula. Excel immediately calculates the result and
puts the age into the D3 cell.
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Now we want to enter the same formula for all the animals. But rather than retyping
the formula over and over, let’s make Excel do it for us. Click once on D3, and then click
the mouse cursor, which is a large plus sign, on the bottom-right corner of D3 and drag it
down to D6. When you release the mouse, all those cells will then be automatically filled
with the same formula, extrapolated down the rows (so each pet has the right age). There
are several alternative ways to fill a formula in cells in Excel and in other programs. (Some
spreadsheets have commands such as Fill Down and Fill Right in various menus.)

After you complete this operation, you will see the following:

If you position your cursor over cell D4 (or D5 or D6) and click once, you
will see the formula that Excel is using for that cell. In the case of D4, the formula
is =2015-C4. But the original formula was =2015-C3. Notice how clever Excel is!
It automatically modified the part of the formula that needed to be varied, namely the
reference to the animal’s birth year.
So your spreadsheet works pretty well and helps you keep track of your pets’ ages.
What happens, though, when the ball drops in Times Square on January 1, 2016? Do you
have to go in and change all those formulas? Indeed!
However, spreadsheets are enormously clever (well, actually, it’s their inventors and
programmers who are enormously clever), and they have built into them millions of
solutions to pesky problems like this one—our need to keep the year current.
Here’s one way: Position your cursor over cell D1 (which was originally empty) and
type in the formula =year(now()), as shown next. Press Enter when you’re done. And
yes, there are two empty parentheses after the word “now,” as shown.

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What you have done is used the now() function, which delivers the current date
and time (whenever this cell is recalculated). The year() function pulls just the year
out of this date and time, so the number 2015 is placed into cell D1, until you restart
Excel on January 1, 2016, and open this spreadsheet, at which point the computer grunts
from too much champagne and goes back to bed. (Actually, feeding champagne to your
computer is frowned upon!) Okay, what will actually happen is the number 2016 will
show up in cell D1.
We still have to make use of this value, so change the formula in cell D3 to =$D$1-C3,
as shown.

This tells Excel to subtract the birth year in cell C3 from the year right now, which is
kept in cell D1. But what’s with those dollar signs? Well, usually cell references used
in formulas are relative to the cell that contains the formula. That’s why the pet’s age
formula you first entered in cell D3 automatically adjusted itself when you filled the cells
beneath it. That original formula you typed in D3, =2015-C3, referred to cell C3, just to
the left of D3, where Jack’s birth year was recorded. When you filled the cells beneath D3,
Excel modified the formula in each cell to refer to the appropriate cell to the left, where
each pet’s birth year was recorded.
Putting the dollar signs into the formula’s cell reference, =$D$1-C3, tells Excel that
this is an absolute cell reference that always refers specifically to cell D1, rather than a
relative cell reference that varies depending on the cell in which the formula is located.
Once you’ve entered the formula =$D$1-C3 in cell D3, fill the three cells beneath
it the same way you did before. The end result will look identical to what you saw before,
but the underlying formula makes it more flexible and intelligent, so that you won’t have
to rewrite your spreadsheet each year.
There are many different spreadsheet functions—far too many to discuss here. Some
common ones include SUM, COUNT, MAX, MIN, TODAY, ISBLANK, and IF. Virtually
every spreadsheet has these functions, but their names and usages may vary.

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Go to cell D8 and type in =average(D3:D6), as shown.

This computes the average of the cell range D3 through D6. Notice that in Excel, a cell
range is notated with a colon between two cell addresses, whereas other spreadsheets
may use two dots. Moreover, some spreadsheets use the function name “AVG” instead of
Average. If you’re not using Microsoft Excel, check with your lab instructor or access
the online help to see what notation your program uses.
You can control the way numbers, dates, and other material are formatted in cells.
Select a cell or range of cells by clicking or click-dragging on it/them with the cursor.
Across the menu ribbon in Excel, you will see various formatting options for font faces,
sizes, and colors, as well as decimal formatting and border drawing. Many other options
are accessed through the formatting submenus.
Next, let’s learn about one more very useful formula. Starting with cell B11, type in
the information shown in the screenshot below:

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(Please note: In our hurry to enter some data, any data, into this spreadsheet, we may
have gotten a little carried away. There is little in the scientific literature that endorses
the notion that gorillas eat humans. In fact, most gorillas seem to find humans
distasteful.)
Now we need to put this little table about animal meal preferences into sorted order.
For a small list like this, sorting may seem trivial, but it is a pretty handy feature when
you have large sets of data.
Highlight the data section (and the Animal and Favorite Food headings), select
the Data menu from the ribbon, and click the Sort button. In the dialog window, check
the box that says My data has headers and set the Sort by column to Animal. Click OK
to sort.

Now let’s use that table about animal foods. Assume our dogs and cat are all typical
animals and like the favorite food listed for their species. Let’s create a new column of pet
information in our spreadsheet that will refer to our Favorite Food table to automatically
determine what each of our pets prefers to eat. We will use Excel’s VLOOKUP formula to
populate this column automatically.

Click on the F3 cell and type in the following formula:

=VLOOKUP(B3,$B$12:$C$15,2,FALSE)

That’s quite a fingerful! What does it all mean? VLOOKUP is a built-in Excel function that
looks up items vertically in a table and delivers whatever information is associated with
the items. In our example, B3 tells the formula to take the value in cell B3 (dog). Next,
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$B$12:$C$15 specifies the table spanning the range of cells from B12 to C15 (and, of
course, we use the dollar signs again because the table is in an absolute location that stays
the same regardless of which cell contains the VLOOKUP formula). The VLOOKUP goes to
the specified table and checks to see whether the value contained in cell B3 is also in the
first column of the table. The 2 in the formula tells Excel that if it finds a data match
in the first column, it should return with whatever value appears in the second column
of the table. Finally, the FALSE value indicates that we will not accept an approximate
match (only exact). VLOOKUP executes a vertical lookup in a table; there is also a
horizontal lookup formula called HLOOKUP, which you can investigate on your own.
Here’s the final product (with the table left out of the picture) after filling the
VLOOKUP formula down for each pet:

The beauty of lookup tables is that if you later find that the favorite food of
dogs is “dog chow,” you need only change one thing in your spreadsheet and it will
automatically recalculate all the cells affected by that change. Try it! Go to cell C13, the
table cell that says dogs prefer “steak,” replace that word with “dog chow,” hit Enter, and
watch what happens in cells F3 and F4.
Information systems try to avoid redundant information because of the “update
problem.” For instance, suppose that you had not used the VLOOKUP function and had
just typed the favorite foods in the columns associated with your pets. If you suddenly
find that cats hate tuna, but love chicken, you can easily change Yowlie’s preference. But
if dogs suddenly love dog chow, you have to change three lines. No big deal in this small
example, but remember that information in the real world is often amazingly vast and
complex. How about a spreadsheet containing a line for every car owner in the United
States? That would stretch into roughly 100 million lines, and you wouldn’t want to face
the update problem there!

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EXERCISE 1
Name_____________________________________ Date_____________________

Section____________________________________

1) Start Microsoft Excel. You should be looking at a blank worksheet.

2) This exercise will help you compute your grade point average for the courses you are taking.
In cell A1, type

Grade Point Average Calculator

in bold font.
3) Starting in cell A3, type the course identification. This varies from school to school but usually
starts with a departmental abbreviation followed by a course number. For instance, “CSCI 110”
stands for “Computer Science, course #110.”
4) In cell B3, type the course name, such as “Introduction to Computing.” You should widen column B
by dragging on the bar line separating B and C near the top. Here’s a screenshot:

5) In C3, type the number of credit hours for the course, and in D3 the letter grade you will get, did
get, or want to get (depending on where you are in the semester).
6) Now enter some more courses. Many colleges permit students to take five per semester, with labs
counting too. If you are on a quarter system or some other schedule, enter your information as
appropriate for your school.
7) To turn the letter grades into grade points, you need to convert them to numbers. A lookup table
is an ideal way to do this. To the right of your courses, create the lookup table, starting in cell H1.
Here’s a sample that is appropriate for some schools that use a plus and minus system:

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8) As you can see, the letter grades are on the left and their translated numerical values are on the
right. Notice that the letter grades must be sorted in order for VLOOKUP to work.
9) In cell E3, type your lookup function call. Given that the grade table is in cells H1 through I10
(yours may be different, so be careful), you must type

=VLOOKUP(D3,$H$1:$I$10,2,FALSE)

Note that you can use lowercase letters instead. The first argument, D3, specifies that we will look
up the value that is in cell D3, which will be a letter grade. The lookup table is given by argument 2,
which is a range of cells. The dollar signs fix the range so that it remains exactly cells H1:I10, even
if we fill down. The third argument, 2, says that we want to take the value from the second column
of the lookup table. And finally, the fourth argument, FALSE, tells Excel that we are not looking
in a set range in the lookup table; instead, we are trying to find an exact match. This means that if
someone gives you a grade of Z or F+, the VLOOKUP function won’t find a number for it. If it were a
range lookup, Excel would pick a value in the given range.
10) Fill down for the other courses.
11) In cell F3, write a formula that multiplies the number of credit hours by the translated grade. For
example, if you entered the grade A in cell D3, this formula should return 11.25, the value in cell C3
(3) multiplied by the value found in cell E3 (3.75).
12) Fill down for the other courses.
13) Write a function that adds up the column of credit hours. This would look like

=SUM(C3:C7)

if there were five courses. Adjust the cell range to fit your data.
14) Do a similar sum for the column containing the translated numerical grade values, and another for
their multiplied values.
15) Aren’t functions fun? Write another one that divides the sum of multiplied values by the sum of
credit hours, giving the grade point average. The result should go into cell C10.
16) Column E is the Numerical Grade, and column F is the Quality Points for each course. Now center
each header cell. To do this quickly, highlight all six cells in row 2 and click on the centering icon.
(If the centering icon is not on your toolbar, click on Format, select Cells..., click on the Alignment
tab, pull down the horizontal menu, and select Center.)

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17) Just to make our spreadsheet pretty (and self-explanatory), try to replicate the look and feel of the
screenshot below. Observe centered, rotated, and bold text. Format the My Grade Point Average
value to have three places after the decimal point. Format the values in columns E and F to have
two places after the decimal point. Most of these formatting options should have toolbar buttons
easily available. Here’s what your spreadsheet could look like:

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EXERCISE 2
Name_____________________________________ Date_____________________

Section____________________________________

1) Start Microsoft Excel or create a new blank worksheet.

2) In this exercise, you will enter some data about the planets of the solar system. In cell A1, create
a title by typing “Planets of Our Solar System,” and change its font to Arial 20.
3) In the first column, enter the names of the planets. It is up to you whether or not you would still
like to include Pluto. You might have to expand the width of the column in order for the names
to show up properly. You should also create a heading for this column: Name. Bold and center it.
Here’s a snapshot:

Here’s the full set of data about the planets:

Name Type Moons Mass Year Distance
Mercury rocky 0 0.06 0.241 0.38
Venus rocky 0 0.82 0.615 0.72
Earth rocky 1 1 1 1
Mars rocky 2 0.11 1.88 1.52
Jupiter gas 63 318 11.86 5.2
Saturn gas 49 95 29.46 9.54
Uranus gas 27 14.6 84.01 19.22
Neptune gas 13 17.2 164.79 30.06
Pluto rocky 1 0.0017 248.5 39.5

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4) In the second column, enter the type of the planet by typing in either rocky or gas.
5) The third column will contain the number of moons. Enter both the data and the header.
6) The fourth column is the mass (amount of material) in each planet, expressed relative to Earth.
Many people think of mass as weight, though this isn’t correct when there is no gravitational field
to pull mass down. Still, mass is the property of material that would exhibit itself in the appropriate
place. The Earth’s mass is about 5.9736 × 1024 kilograms. That’s about 6 septillion kilograms, or
13.2 septillion pounds. Quite huge! Now you can see why astronomers use bigger “units,” namely
whole planets.
7) The fifth column is the year of the planet, or the time it takes to go around the sun once. Again,
Earth’s year is considered to be a unit, which is why it is 1. The way to read this relation is that a
year on Mars is 1.88 times that of Earth. Since Earth revolves around the sun in about 365.25 days
(yes, that’s a fourth of a day), Mars must take 1.88 × 365.25, or 686.67, days to make one complete
trip around good old Sol (our sun).
8) The last column is the distance of the planet from the sun. Again, Earth is considered 1. In reality,
Earth is about 92,750,690 miles from the sun. (This concept of distance from the sun is very
complicated because the planets vary in their route around the sun and all orbits are elliptical,
or noncircular, which means that sometimes they are farther from the sun than at other times.
Interested students should sign up for Astronomy 101.)
9) In cell C14, type “93.” In cell A14, enter “Earth from sun,” and in cell D14, “millions of miles.”
If you type a string of letters in a cell where the column is too narrow, the letters spill over to the
next column, unless there is something there already.
10) After you’ve entered the data, create a thick line under the headers to set them off from the data.
Highlight cells A3 to F3 and use the Border drop-down menu from the ribbon.
Once you finish entering data, your spreadsheet will look similar to the following:

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11) Just entering this much information would be a fair amount of work, but let’s practice with some
formulas. First, let’s show what the mass of each planet is in kilograms. These values should go next
to the current mass column, so first we need to insert a new column to the right of column D. Click
on E to highlight the entire column and then click on Insert in the main menu bar. Select Columns,
which will cause one new column to be added in front of the highlighted column.
12) In cell E3, insert a header Mass(kg) to indicate that the values in this column are mass in kilograms.
To be perfectly clear, we should back up and change the header for column D to indicate that these
mass values are abstract units where Earth = 1. To do this, click on cell D3. Then type “Mass.” Next,
hold down the Alt key (which is often next to the space bar) and press the Enter key. This causes a
break to occur in the data, putting what follows on the second line. Now type “(Earth=1)” and press
Enter again. This is what it will look like:

13) We will put formulas in nine cells, E4 through E12, to express the mass in kilograms. But we won’t
repeat our work. Instead, we will put the formula for Mercury into cell E4 and then copy it. In cell
E4, type a formula that multiplies the value of D4 by Earth’s approximate mass. To avoid typing all
those zeroes, use scientific notation:

=D4*6.0e24

Recall that scientific notation is a way of expressing extremely large or extremely small numbers.
6.0e24 means 6.0 × 1024. The letter e stands for exponent. Remember that in Excel formulas,
the asterisk stands in for the multiplication symbol, partly out of respect for older FORTRAN
programmers, but also because the x character would get confused with the letter x, as in “row X.”
14) To copy this formula quickly, click once on cell E4, the one we just entered the formula into.
Then continue holding your mouse, and drag down until cells E5 to E12 are all highlighted. Hold
down the Ctrl key and press D, which prompts a fill-down operation. This operation copies the
formula in the top cell down into the ones below, making adjustments for which rows the cells
are in. (You can also click on Edit in the menu bar, click on Fill, and select Down. The keyboard
shortcut is often a lot faster!) There is always a fill right operation, which often comes in handy.

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15) Do the same thing for year, making a new Year column that shows the planet’s revolution in Earth
days. Use 365.25 for the number of Earth days in an Earth year. The new column’s header should say
Year(in days). You should also rename the previous column as Years (Earth=1).
16) Finally, we will do the same thing for distance, showing the planet’s distance from the sun in
millions of miles by converting the Earth=1 value to real miles by multiplying by 93. However,
instead of “hard coding” 93 into every formula, use the Earth distance that appears in cell C14. But
there’s a catch here: If you type the formula =G4*C14 and fill down, what happens? Something
goes wrong. Describe it by looking at the formulas for Venus and Earth.
17) To fix this problem, we need to anchor the C14 cell so it doesn’t change in copied formulas. This is
discussed in the activity. Cell C14 needs to be changed to an absolute cell reference. Fix the formula
for Mercury and fill down again.

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DELIVERABLES
Print up your spreadsheet or hand in the file electronically. Consult your lab instructor
for instructions.

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