PC SPREADSHEETS PAY OFF

By Dave Wallace

RIVER BENDER - June 1999

The first PC spreadsheet software was called VISICALC. It became available in the early '80s in the Apple II computer after being conceived by Dan Bricklin, a Harvard student. Dan got the idea from seeing his statistics professor tediously recalculate equations on the blackboard after having to correct a single variable. He reasoned that a computer program could be created to automatically make calculations regardless of changes made to the variables.

I bought an Apple as my first computer largely because of VISICALC. The idea of setting up a spreadsheet in which the input could be varied while watching the output change was indeed a timesaving concept. It saved having to write many lines of Fortran programming to answer "what if" engineering questions at my work.

In a nutshell here's how a spreadsheet program works: Your PC displays columns labeled A, B, C, on to AA, AB, AC, etc., and rows labeled 1, 2, 3, etc. A cell is the intersection of a column and a row, such as cell A1 at column A, row 1. One may type a value or an equation in a cell. For example, entering the numbers 2, 4 and 9 in cells A1, A2 and A3 and then in cell A4 entering the equation "=sum(A1:A3)" adds all the values in cells A1 through A3 . Immediately after typing the equation a 15 appears in cell A4. But where the spreadsheet really pays off is when variables are changed a new sum is displayed.

This, of course, is an oversimplification of a spreadsheet's power. Not only can large columns of numbers be added instantly, all sorts of equations can be entered to manipulate numbers. Thousands of computations can be made using complex equations . Amortizing a home mortgage is a good example.

Here's a few of my applications:

Every Saturday morning I download weekly closing stock market prices of securities. Anyone can do this free from http://quote.yahoo.com. The data downloads in spreadsheet format to a file in my MS Excel spreadsheet program. I then copy/paste the stock symbols and closing prices to my personal finance spreadsheet. Once this is done computations occur instantly and the spreadsheet shows a wealth of information. For example, I see the present worth of any given stock as well as its gain for the week and year and the same for totals of all stocks. Dividends, shares from reinvestment and percent yield are posted manually providing a complete snapshot of our financial picture.

Other examples of my use of spreadsheets are to track the cost basis of stocks purchased over time, capital gains and quarterly earnings to show a company's performance displayed graphically. For the past 15 years I've entered monthly mileage from my bicycle computer to a spreadsheet to track total miles and average miles/mo. I do the same from a running time meter on our heat pump and with electric and water bills.

Most PCs nowadays come equipped with some sort of spreadsheet software such as MS Works, Office 97, MS Excel, Lotus, etc. If your PC doesn't have spreadsheet software, check discount software houses on the Web. At Egghead I've seen Lotus 123, Ver 5.0 for as low as $49.95. Once you've started using spreadsheet software, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it. If I had to choose between a word processor and a spreadsheet program, I wouldn't hesitate to pick the spreadsheet.