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, 70% of the graduating seniors will not be in a job related to their major, but they will always use Word, Excel and PowerPoint to communicate with their clients and business associates.

2. 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 web site page to view the class material:
Select ‘Departments at Calvin’
Select ‘Computer Science’ department
Select ‘Courses’
Select ‘IS 171’
Select ‘Section X’
Select ‘Class Schedule’
The Lab and Project write-ups will be available at least one week in advance.
Knightvision may also be used to view the class schedule and policies. You will submit each of your assignments using the ‘View/Complete Assignment’ feature for the given week of the course.
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

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).
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

4. A Brief History of Spreadsheets
The accountant’s paper ledger
Dan Bricklin and VisiCalc
Mitch Kapor and Lotus 1-2-3
Bill Gates and Microsoft Excel
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

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 the computerized equivalent of an accountant’s ledger.
In 1980, when PCs were first introduced, they had the following characteristics:
No hard drive
No monitor
No Operating System
No applications
Cost approximately $5000 ($10-$15K in 2005 )
Solution: People started writing programs (applications) that would run stand-a-lone on the new Personal Computers and the first person to introduce the idea of a spreadsheet was Dan Bricklin.
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

6. Dan Bricklin (1951-) and VisiCalc
1979 – Spreadsheet on Apple II
Visible calculator
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 in 1980 (Intel). Then came Mitch Kapor and the introduction of Lotus...
Can still get VisiCalc executable (for DOS) at
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

7. Mitch Kapor (1950-) and Lotus 1-2-3
1982 – Spreadsheet on IBM PC
First to include Charts and Graphs
Very successful
1985 – Bought out VisiCalc
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 was the first product to include 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.
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

8. Bill Gates and Microsoft Excel
1985: originally written for Apple II
1987: shipped with the introduction of the first Windows Oper. Sys.
Graphical interface
September 30, Microsoft announced the shipment to retail stores of Microsoft Excel for the Apple Macintosh, a powerful, full-featured microcomputer spreadsheet that combined 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.
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

9. 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 (e.g., B3)
Worksheet and spreadsheet are synonymous terms and will be used interchangeably in this course.
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

10. More on Excel Cells may contain:
Text (literals)
Numeric Data (numbers, percents, dates)
Formulas (=B3+C3)
Electronic spreadsheet does the paper version one better: it performs the calculations
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

11. Advantages Labor Savings Allows "what-if" analysis using scenarios
Increase all salaries for a company by 3%.
Do this for 10,000 or more employees!
Allows "what-if" analysis using scenarios
Allows graphing and charting
Allows use of complex functions (PMT, FV)
Allows data to be passed between worksheets
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

12. Components of a Worksheet
Title Bar
Menu Bar
Toolbars
Standard toolbar
Formatting toolbar
View  Toolbars menu option to display additional toolbars
Formula bar (active cell address and displayed value)
Worksheet area and scroll bars
Worksheet tabs
The title bar contains the name of the current active workbook.
The Menu Bar contains all available Excel features but it is sometimes difficult to find the desired feature (it may be on a submenu); therefore, Toolbars make the most common functions and features available to the user.
There are approximately 20 different Toolbars available in Excel and you may create your own Toolbar and/or customize an existing Toolbar.
Use the Tools  Customize function to show the Standard and Formatting toolbars on two rows and full menus on the Menu Bar.
Show how to use the Tools  Customize function to add and remove buttons on a Toolbar.
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda

13. Don’t let this happen to you!
TM & © 2002 Grimmy, Inc. Mike Peters
from (9/5/02)
12/2/2018
Fred Ferwerda