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SPREADSHEET
A traditional accounting tool
whose electronic counterparts is the basis for some of the most
popular business programs.
More Detailed Definition:
A table of values arranged in
rows and columns. Each value can have a predefined relationship to
the other values. If you change one value, therefore, you may need
to change other values as well.
Spreadsheet applications (sometimes referred to simply as
spreadsheets) are computer programs that let you create and
manipulate spreadsheets electronically. In a spreadsheet
application, each value sits in a cell. You can define what type
of data is in each cell and how different cells depend on one
another. The relationships between cells are called formulas, and
the names of the cells are called labels.
Once you have defined the cells and the formulas for linking them
together, you can enter your data. You can then modify selected
values to see how all the other values change accordingly. This
enables you to study various what-if scenarios.
A simple example of a useful spreadsheet application is one that
calculates mortgage payments for a house. You would define five
cells:
1. total cost of the house
2. down payment
3. mortgage rate
4. mortgage term
5. monthly payment
Once you had defined how these cells depend on one another, you
could enter numbers and play with various possibilities. For
example, keeping all the other values the same, you could see how
different mortgage rates would affect your monthly payments.
There are a number of spreadsheet applications on the market,
Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel being among the most famous. The more
powerful spreadsheet applications support graphics features that
enable you to produce charts and graphs from the data.
Most spreadsheet applications are multidimensional, meaning that
you can link one spreadsheet to another. A three-dimensional
spreadsheet, for example, is like a stack of spreadsheets all
connected by formulas. A change made in one spreadsheet
automatically affects other spreadsheets.
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