Excel and Google Sheets were always a nightmare for me to think about. I hated the thought of using either one. It was mostly because I really didn’t know how to work with either program and it was one of the reasons I wanted to minor in information technology. So as the semester continued and I started to work with google sheets and its functions, and I started to see how easy it is to use, it still isn’t my favorite program to work with, but I dislike it a lot less now.
My individual assignment to work with a data a sheet seemed like a daunting task when it was assigned. First I tried to look for data that I could use, and nothing seemed to work for me, so I ultimately decided to create my own data. After creating the data sheet to work with it was easy to find formulas to make new and more information for me. I was surprised at how easy it was for me to decide which functions I should use for the data. This daunting task didn’t seem so daunting anymore.
Before using the function, I used conditional formatting. I had each t-shirt size turn the cell a different color and because some of the shirts were different prices I had the text color be dependent upon what the price was in the cell. One of the first formulas I used was count if, and I used it in many different ways. First I used it to count the number of students who bought a shirt per grade. This way it was able to break down the data sheet to create more useful information about each grade level. I also used count if to count the number of each size shirt that was needed. This would be useful for a real shirt order so you can order the right amount of t-shirts.
Two other functions I used are pretty basic. Product and sum multiply and add cells or a range of cells together. I used product to multiply the number of shirts ordered times the price of the shirt to know how much of each shirt sized had been sold. I used sum to total the number of t-shirts sold and total sales. These are fairly basic formulas and are self-explanatory, but they do a lot of work that users don’t want to do themselves.
Another simple function that is a timesaver for users is concatenate. This functions “glues” one string to another string. Concatenate sounds complex but it really actually isn’t. The way I used it in my data is actually a common way to use concatenate. To join a first and last name together in one cell. This saves users from manually typing first and last names into a cell. It’s a simple function but a major time saver.
The function IF can do a variety of things. The main reason I used it was to create a conditional. If the shirt was a certain size, then it cost a certain amount, and if it was another size, it could cost a different amount. I nested multiple IF functions inside of each other to create a conditional. Nesting formulas is difficult especially when you nest six or seven in one larger function. IF, in my opinion, is the best function to use because you can use it for so many things.
Unique and sort are the last of the functions I used. Both of the functions make creating a summary for the user. Unique was an unknown function until I submitted my data for review. Unique will return the “unique” values from a selected area of the data. In my case, it returned t-shirt sizes, so I didn’t have manually add the list of shirt sizes to my summary page. This like many of the other functions helps makes the user’s job easier when using their data. Sort isn’t as important as other functions its primary job is to sort a certain set of data the way you tell it either by ascending or descending order. When using sort and unique together, you can format the data that unique has returned in the order you want.
Functions in Google Sheets vastly improve what you can do in sheets. Functions make data sheets dynamic when they seem flat. All of the functions I chose to use in my data sheet were for taking data and making it into information that could be used. Creating information from data is one of the main aspects of using sheets. Having and sharing information is the larger goal of data.