1. IS 171 Computing with Spreadsheets
Introduction to Spreadsheets
Week 1
Take attendance and let them answer one or more of the following questions:
Name, year at Calvin and major
Home town
Favorite sport or hobby
Level of Excel experience (none, minimum, extensive, expert)
Something unique or special about them (family, job, pet, hobby, etc.)
As an alternative to taking attendance, split them into teams of two and have each student introduce their partner by answering one or more of the above questions.
Let them know that this is a skill building course, not a theory course, and therefore, most of the work will be done in the labs.
Relate how important this skill is relative to any job they may get in the future since, in 5-10 years, they will probably not be in a job related to their major, but they will always use Word, Excel and PowerPoint to communicate their clients and business associates.

2. Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson
Introduction
Course Overview and Policies
Where do spreadsheets fit?
The history of spreadsheets
Intro to Excel
Cover course documents, show how to navigate Calvin’s main page
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

3. The Idea of a Spreadsheet
What is a spreadsheet?
What are its uses?
Have you ever used a spreadsheet?
Ask the students to define what a spreadsheet is
Relate it to a checkbook register along with a pocket calculator.
The checkbook register has columns for date, check #, etc.
The checkbook has rows for each entry.
Ask the students what practical applications they would use Excel for. Typical responses might include:
Balance a checkbook
A teacher’s grade book
Family budget
Track stocks and investments
You might also ask the students where a spreadsheet fits in the data hierarchy of bit, byte, field, record, file and database (Answer: File because a table has fields (columns) and records (rows).
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

4. A Brief History of Spreadsheets
The accountant’s ledger
Dan Bricklin and Visicalc
Mitch Kapor and Lotus 1-2-3
Bill Gates and Microsoft Excel
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Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

5. The accountant’s paper ledger
Big sheets of paper (spread out the sheets?)
Permits storing figures
Fig. 1.1, p. 2 of book
The accountant’s ledger is pure paper and hard labor.
A spreadsheet is a computerized ledger.
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

6. Dan Bricklin (1951-) and VisiCalc
1979
Visible calculator
Apple II
Pushed sales of personal computers
In 1978 Daniel Bricklin, while a student at the Harvard Business School, came up with the idea. Actually went to market in May 1979.
Bob Frankston whom Bricklin recruited to improve on his idea came up with the term “visible calculator”. They programmed it to fit into 20K of machine memory allowing it to run on the Apple II and it was very successful.
In fact, it can be argued that VisiCalc on the Apple led to the surge of personal computer purchases.
During its lifetime, about 1 million copies of VisiCalc were sold.
VisiCalc was slow in responding to the introduction of the IBM PC (Intel). Then came Lotus...
Can still get VisiCalc executable (for DOS) at
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

7. Mitch Kapor (1950-) and Lotus 1-2-3
1982
Spreadsheets for presentation too
Wildly successful
Kapor was product manager for VisiCalc for about 6 months in 1980.
In 1982 he started Lotus Development corporation with Jonathan Sachs. Before he did this, he offered Personal Software Corporation (VisiCalc’s owner company) his Lotus program. He was declined on the grounds that its functionality was “too limited”
Lotus made it easier to use spreadsheets and it included charting, plotting and database capabilities. It introduced the idea of naming cells, cell ranges, and allowing macros.
With the addition of VisiPlot, Lotus went on to be one of the all-time best selling application software packages in the world.
In an ironic turn of events, in 1985, Lotus bought out VisiCalc and then discontinued it.
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

8. Bill Gates and Microsoft Excel
1985: originally written for Apple II
1987: shipped with introduction of Windows
Graphical interface
September 30, Microsoft announces the shipment to retail stores of Microsoft Excel for the Apple Macintosh, a powerful, full-featured microcomputer spreadsheet that combines business graphics with an on-sheet database.
The Apple version was graphical (even before windows).
When Microsoft launched the Windows operating system in 1987, Excel was one of the first products to be released for it. It was the only windows spreadsheet for 3 years ( ) and then Lotus announced a Windows version of its product. Unfortunately, by then, it was too little too late and Microsoft had pretty much captured the market.
In 1995 IBM acquired Lotus Development. Excel owns the spreadsheet market at present, and there are no real competitors.
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

9. Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson
Introduction to Excel
Spreadsheet: Excel calls it a Worksheet
A Workbook is a collection of worksheets
Grid of columns (labeled alphabetically) and rows (labeled numerically)
Each box is called a cell
Each cell is named by its cell reference (cell address) which is the column letter followed by the row number (such as B3)
Worksheet and spreadsheet are synonymous terms and will be used interchangeably in this course.
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

10. Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson
More on Excel
Cells can contain
Constants (literals)
1239
Hello
Formulas
=(B3+C3)
Electronic spreadsheet does the paper version one better: it performs the calculations
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

11. Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson
Advantages
Labor Savings
Change all salaries for an company.
Do this for 1000 or more employees!
Allows "what-if" analysis; can play with the numbers…
Allows graphing and charting
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

12. Components of a Worksheet
Title Bar
Menu Bar
Toolbars
Standard toolbar
Formatting toolbar
View Toolbars menu option to change toolbars displayed
Active cell
Formula bar
Displayed value
Name box
Worksheet tabs
Entering/replacing cell contents (Tab, Enter, or arrow keys)
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Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson

13. Don’t let this happen to you!
TM & © 2002 Grimmy, Inc. Mike Peters
from (9/5/02)
11/24/2018
Fred Ferwerda and Carol Wilson