spreadsheet n : a screen-oriented interactive program enabling a user to lay out financial data on the screen

English

Noun

1. A sheet of paper, marked with a grid, in which financial data is recorded and totals calculated manually.
2. A computer simulation of such a system of recording tabular data, with totals and other formulas calculated automatically.

Translations

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper worksheet. It displays multiple cells that together make up a grid consisting of rows and columns, each cell containing either alphanumeric text or numeric values. A spreadsheet cell may alternatively contain a formula that defines how the contents of that cell is to be calculated from the contents of any other cell (or combination of cells) each time any cell is updated. Spreadsheets are frequently used for financial information because of their ability to re-calculate the entire sheet automatically after a change to a single cell.

In 1971, Rene K. Pardo and Remy Landau filed a patent on a spreadsheet related algorithm. Visicalc is usually considered the first electronic spreadsheet (although this has been challenged), and it helped turn the Apple II computer into a success and greatly assisted in their widespread application. Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet of DOS era. Excel is now generally considered to have the largest market share.

History

Paper spreadsheets

The word "spreadsheet" came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item (text and/or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one large one. The compound word "spread-sheet" came to mean the format used to present book-keeping ledgers—with columns for categories of expenditures across the top, invoices listed down the left margin, and the amount of each payment in the cell where its row and column intersect—which were, traditionally, a "spread" across facing pages of a bound ledger (book for keeping accounting records) or on oversized sheets of paper ruled into rows and columns in that format and approximately twice as wide as ordinary paper.

Early implementations

Batch spreadsheet report generators

The concept of an electronic spreadsheet was outlined in the 1961 paper "Budgeting Models and System Simulation" by Richard Mattessich. The subsequent work by Mattessich (1964a, Chpt. 9, Accounting and Analytical Methods) and its companion volume, Mattessich (1964b, Simulation of the Firm through a Budget Computer Program) applied computerized spreadsheets to accounting and budgeting systems (on main-frame computers in FORTRAN IV). Batch Spreadsheets dealt primarily with the addition or subtraction of entire columns or rows - rather than individual cells.

LANPAR spreadsheet compiler

Key invention in the development of electronic spreadsheets was made by Rene K. Pardo and Remy Landau, who filed in 1971 on spreadsheet automatic natural order recalculation algorithm in 1970. While the patent was initially rejected by the patent office as being a purely mathematical invention, following 12 years of Appeals, Pardo and Landau won a landmark court case at the CCPA (Predecessor Court of the Federal Circuit) overturning the Patent Office in 1983 with the world's first software patent - establishing that "something does not cease to become patentable merely because the point of novelty is in an algorithm." This case helped establish the viability of software patents.

The actual software was called LANPAR - LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random. This was conceived and entirely developed in the summer of 1969 following Pardo and Landau's recent graduation from Harvard University. Co-inventor Rene Pardo recalls that he felt that one manager at Bell Canada should not have to depend on programmers to program and modify budgeting forms, and he thought of letting users type out forms in any order and having computer calculating results in the right order. The software was developed in 1969.

LANPAR was used by Bell Canada, AT&T and the 18 operating telcos nationwide for their local and national budgeting operations. LANPAR was also used by General Motors. Its uniqueness was the incorporation of natural order recalculation, as opposed to left-to-right, top to bottom sequence for calculating the results in each cell that was used by Visicalc, Supercalc and the first version of Multiplan. Without natural order recalculation the users had to manually recalculate the spreadsheet as many times as necessary until the values in all the cells had stopped changing.

The LANPAR system was implemented on GE400 and Honeywell 6000 on line timesharing systems enabling users to program remotely via computer terminals and modems. Data could be entered dynamically either by paper tape, specific file access, on line, or even external data bases. Sophisticated mathematical expressions including logical comparisons and "if/then" statements could be used in any cell, and cells could be presented in any order.

Autoplan/Autotab spreadsheet programming language

In 1968, three former employees from the General Electric computer company headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona set out to start their own software development house. A. Leroy Ellison, Harry N. Cantrell, and Russell E. Edwards found themselves doing a large number of calculations when making tables for the business plans that they were presenting to venture capitalists. They decided to save themselves a lot of effort and wrote a computer program that produced their tables for them. This program, originally conceived as a simple utility for their personal use, would turn out to be the first software product offered by the company that would become known as Capex Corporation. "AutoPlan" ran on GE’s Time-sharing service; afterward, a version that ran on IBM mainframes was introduced under the name "AutoTab". (National CSS offered a similar product, CSSTAB, which had a moderate timesharing user base by the early 70s. A major application was opinion research tabulation.) AutoPlan/AutoTab was not a WYSIWYG interactive spreadsheet program, it was a simple scripting language for spreadsheets. The user defined the names and labels for the rows and columns, then the formulas that defined each row or column.

Interactive spreadsheets

Interactive spreadsheets became possible when computer displays became available. Except for LANPAR- which allowed many users in real time and online to timesharing systems to simultaneously program or run their spreadsheets from their computer terminals across the country - earlier implementations were mainly designed around batch programs and certainly none of these batch programs allowed for forward referencing of cells or natural order recalculation. In the early 1970s text based computer displays began to be used as input/output devices for interactive transaction processes. This was sufficient for early interactive spreadsheets to be implemented. The lack of on-line historical material relating to such systems, and their limited coverage in academic and commercial publications, makes it hard to assess their level of innovation and ultimate impact.

APLDOT modeling language

An example of an early "industrial weight" spreadsheet was APLDOT, developed in 1976 at the United States Railway Association on an IBM 360/91, running at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD. The application was used successfully for many years in developing such applications as financial and costing models for the US Congress and for Conrail. APLDOT was dubbed a "spreadsheet" because financial analysts and strategic planners used it to solve the same problems they addressed with paper spreadsheet pads.

VisiCalc

The spreadsheet concept became widely known in the late 1970s and early 1980s because of Dan Bricklin's implementation of VisiCalc. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet that combined all essential features of modern spreadsheet applications, such as WYSIWYG interactive user interface, automatic recalculation, status and formula lines, range copying with relative and absolute references, formula building by selecting referenced cells. PC World magazine has called VisiCalc the first electronic spreadsheet.

Bricklin has spoken of watching his university professor create a table of calculation results on a blackboard. When the professor found an error, he had to tediously erase and rewrite a number of sequential entries in the table, triggering Bricklin to think that he could replicate the process on a computer, using the blackboard as the model to view results of underlying formulas. His idea became VisiCalc, the first application that turned the personal computer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a business tool.

VisiCalc went on to become the first "killer app", an application that was so compelling, people would buy a particular computer just to own it. In this case the computer was the Apple II, and VisiCalc was no small part in that machine's success. The program was later ported to a number of other early computers, notably CP/M machines, the Atari 8-bit family and various Commodore platforms. Nevertheless, VisiCalc remains best known as "an Apple II program".

Lotus 1-2-3 and other MS-DOS spreadsheets

The acceptance of the IBM PC following its introduction in August, 1981, began slowly, because most of the programs available for it were ports from other 8-bit platforms. Things changed dramatically with the introduction of Lotus 1-2-3 in November, 1982, and release for sale in January, 1983. It became that platform's killer app, and drove sales of the PC due to the improvements in speed and graphics compared to VisiCalc.

Lotus 1-2-3, along with its competitor Borland Quattro, soon displaced VisiCalc. Lotus 1-2-3 was released on January 26, 1983, started outselling then-most-popular VisiCalc the very same year, and for a number of years was the leading spreadsheet for DOS.

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft had been developing Excel on the Macintosh platform for several years at this point, where it had developed into a fairly powerful system. A port of Excel to Windows 2.0 resulted in a fully functional Windows spreadsheet. The more robust Windows 3.x platforms of the early 1990s made it possible for Excel to take market share from Lotus. By the time Lotus responded with usable Windows products, Microsoft had started compiling their Office suite. Starting in the mid 1990s continuing through 2008, Microsoft Excel has dominated the commercial spreadsheet market.

Apple Numbers

Numbers is Apple Inc.'s spreadsheet software, part of iWork. It focuses on usability and the elegance of chart presentation. Numbers completed Apple's productivity suite, making it a viable competitor to Microsoft Office. Since it is a 1.0 product, it lacks features such as Pivot tables.

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org Calc is a freely available, open-source program modelled after Microsoft Excel. Calc can both open and save in the Excel (XLS) file format. Calc can be acquired as both an installation file and a portable program, capable of being run from a device such as a USB memory drive. It can be downloaded from the OpenOffice.org website.

Web based spreadsheets

With the advent of advanced web technologies such as Ajax circa 2005, a new generation of online spreadsheets has emerged. Equipped with a rich Internet application user experience, the best web based online spreadsheets have many of the features seen in desktop spreadsheet applications. Some of them have strong multi-user collaboration features. Some of them offer real time updates from remote sources such as stock prices and currency exchange rates.

Other products

A number of companies have attempted to break into the spreadsheet market with programs based on very different paradigms. Lotus introduced what is likely the most successful example, Lotus Improv, which saw some commercial success, notably in the financial world where its powerful data mining capabilities remain well respected to this day. Spreadsheet 2000 attempted to dramatically simplify formula construction, but was generally not successful.

• A list of old spreadsheet software
  • Advantage
  • Boeing Calc 3D
  • Lotus Improv
  • Javelin Software
  • Lotus Jazz for Macintosh
  • Lucid 3D
  • MultiPlan
  • PowerStep for NeXT Step
  • ProCalc
  • Borland's Quattro Pro
  • Silk
  • SuperCalc
  • Surpass
  • Lotus Symphony
  • TWIN
  • TurboCalc
  • VP Planner
  • Wingz for Macintosh
  • Target Planner Calc for CP/M and TRS-DOS

Concepts

Cells

A "cell" can be thought of as a box for holding a datum. A single cell is usually referenced by its column and row (A2 would represent the cell below containing the value 10). Its physical size can usually be tailored for its content by dragging its height or width at box intersections (or for entire columns or rows by dragging the column or rows headers).

An array of cells is called a "sheet" or "worksheet". It is analogous to an array of variables in a conventional computer program (although certain unchanging values, once entered, could be considered, by the same analogy, constants). In most implementations, many worksheets may be located within a single spreadsheet. A worksheet is simply a subset of the spreadsheet divided for the sake of clarity. Functionally, the spreadsheet operates as a whole and all cells operate as global variables within the spreadsheet ('read' access only except its own containing cell).

A cell may contain a value or a formula, or it may simply be left empty. By convention, formulas usually begin with = sign.

Values

A value can be entered from the computer keyboard by directly typing into the cell itself. Alternatively, a value can be based on a formula (see below), which might perform a calculation, display the current date or time, or retrieve external data such as a stock quote or a database value.

The Spreadsheet Value Rule

Computer scientist Alan Kay used the term value rule to summarize a spreadsheet's operation: a cell's value relies solely on the formula the user has typed into the cell. The formula may rely on the value of other cells, but those cells are likewise restricted to user-entered data or formulas. There are no 'side effects' to calculating a formula: the only output is to display the calculated result inside its occupying cell. There is no natural mechanism for permanently modifying the contents of a cell unless the user manually modifies the cell's contents. In the context of programming languages, this yields a limited form of first-order functional programming.

Automatic recalculation

A standard of spreadsheets since the mid 80s , this optional feature eliminates the need to manually request the spreadsheet program to recalculate values (nowadays typically the default option unless specifically 'switched off' for large spreadsheets, usually to improve performance). Some earlier spreadsheets required a manual request to recalculate, since recalculation of large or complex spreadsheets often reduced data entry speed. Many modern spreadsheets still retain this option.

Real time update

This feature refers to updating a cell's contents periodically when its value is derived from an external source - such as a cell in another "remote" spreadsheet. For shared, web-based spreadsheets, it applies to "immediately" updating cells that have been altered by another user. All dependent cells have to be updated also.

Formula

Many spreadsheet applications permit charts, graphs or histograms to be generated from specified groups of cells which are dynamically re-built as cell contents change. The generated graphic component can either be embedded within the current sheet or added as a separate object.

Programming issues

Just as the early programming languages were designed to generate spreadsheet printouts, programming techniques themselves have evolved to process tables (also known as spreadsheets or matrices) of data more efficiently in the computer itself.

Spreadsheets have evolved into powerful programming languages; specifically, they are functional, visual, and multiparadigm languages.

Many people find it easier to perform calculations in spreadsheets than by writing the equivalent sequential program. This is due to two traits of spreadsheets.

• They use spatial relationships to define program relationships. Like all animals, humans have highly developed intuitions about spaces, and of dependencies between items. Sequential programming usually requires typing line after line of text, which must be read slowly and carefully to be understood and changed.
• They are forgiving, allowing partial results and functions to work. One or more parts of a program can work correctly, even if other parts are unfinished or broken. This makes writing and debugging programs much easier, and faster . Sequential programming usually needs every program line and character to be correct for a program to run. One error usually stops the whole program and prevents any result.

A spreadsheet program is designed to perform general computation tasks using spatial relationships rather than time as the primary organizing principle .

It is often convenient to think of a spreadsheet as a mathematical graph, where the nodes are spreadsheet cells, and the edges are references to other cells specified in formulas. This is often called the dependency graph of the spreadsheet. References between cells can take advantage of spatial concepts such as relative position and absolute position, as well as named locations, to make the spreadsheet formulas easier to understand and manage.

Spreadsheets usually attempt to automatically update cells when the cells on which they depend have been changed. The earliest spreadsheets used simple tactics like evaluating cells in a particular order, but modern spreadsheets compute a minimal recomputation order from the dependency graph. Later spreadsheets also include a limited ability to propagate values in reverse, altering source values so that a particular answer is reached in a certain cell. Since spreadsheet cells formulas are not generally invertible, though, this technique is of somewhat limited value.

Many of the concepts common to sequential programming models have analogues in the spreadsheet world. For example, the sequential model of the indexed loop is usually represented as a table of cells, with similar formulas (normally differing only in which cells they reference).

Shortcomings

While spreadsheets are a great step forward in quantitative modeling, they have deficiencies. At the level of overall user benefits, spreadsheets have four main shortcomings.

• Spreadsheets have significant reliability problems. Research studies estimate that roughly 94% of spreadsheets deployed in the field contain errors, and 5.2% of cells in unaudited spreadsheets contain errors.

• The practical expressiveness of spreadsheets is limited. Several factors contribute to this limitation. Implementing a complex model requires implementing detailed layouts, cell-at-a-time. Authors have difficulty remembering the meanings of hundreds or thousands of cell addresses that appear in formulas.

• Productivity of spreadsheet modelers is reduced by the cell-level focus of spreadsheets. Even conceptually simple changes in spreadsheets (such as changing starting or ending time or time grain, adding new members or a level of hierarchy to a dimension, or changing one conceptual formula that is represented as hundreds of cell formulas) often require large numbers of manual cell-level operations (such as inserting or deleting cells/rows/columns, editing and copying formulas, re-laying out worksheets).

These four deficiencies in high-level benefits have deeper causes that, ironically, flow directly from the signature strength of spreadsheets (that they capture the structure of models in terms of WYSIWYG sheet layout for authors and report users).

• Spreadsheets capture model logic in terms of sheet layout, especially contiguous layout of cells in a table. Spreadsheets have weak or nonexistent methods to capture higher level structures such as named variables, segmentation dimensions, and time series.

• Formulas are subordinated to the cell layout. This forces the sheet layout to carry the structure of the model, not variables and formulas that relate variables. This also causes a large proliferation of cells, formulas and cell-level tasks even when only a few basic concepts are involved in a model. This forces authors to think and work at the level of cells instead of at the level of the natural concepts and structures of the model.

• Formulas expressed in terms of cell addresses are hard to keep straight and hard to audit. Research shows that spreadsheet auditors who check numerical results and cell formulas find no more errors than auditors who only check numerical results (same as previous reference by Powell et al).

• Proliferation of error-prone manual cell-level operations contributes to all four of the high-level problems listed above.

Other problems associated with spreadsheets include:

• Some sources advocate the use of specialized software instead of spreadsheets for some applications (budgeting, statistics)
• Many spreadsheet software products, such as Excel (versions prior to 2007) and OpenOffice.org Calc, have a capacity limit of about 65,000 rows. This can present a problem for people using very large datasets, and may result in lost data.
• Lack of auditing and revision control. This makes it difficult to determine who changed what and when. This can cause problems with regulatory compliance. Lack of revision control greatly increases the risk of errors due the inability to track, isolate and test changes made to a document.
• Lack of security. Generally, if one has permission to open a spreadsheet, one has permission to modify any part of it. This, combined with the lack of auditing above, can make it easy for someone to commit fraud.
• Because they are loosely structured, it is easy for someone to introduce an error, either accidentally or intentionally, by entering information in the wrong place or expressing dependencies among cells (such as in a formula) incorrectly.
• The results of a formula (example "=A1*B1") applies only to a single cell (that is, the cell the formula is actually located in - in this case perhaps C1), even though it can "extract" data from many other cells, and even real time dates and actual times. This means that to cause a similar calculation on an array of cells, an almost identical formula (but residing in its own "output" cell) must be repeated for each row of the "input" array. This differs from a "formula" in a conventional computer program which would typically have one calculation which would then apply to all of the input in turn. With current spreadsheets, this forced repetition of near identical formulae can have detrimental consequences from a quality assurance standpoint and is often the cause of many spreadsheet errors. Some spreadsheets have array formulas to address this issue.
• Trying to manage the sheer volume of spreadsheets which sometimes exists within an organization without proper security, audit trails, the unintentional introduction of errors and other items listed above can become overwhelming.

While there are built-in and third-party tools for desktop spreadsheet applications that address some of these shortcomings, awareness and use of these is generally low.

See also

• List of spreadsheets
• List of online spreadsheets
• Comparison of spreadsheet software
• Summation in spreadsheets
• Moving and copying in spreadsheets
• Attribute-value system

References

External links

History of spreadsheets

• A Brief History of Spreadsheets by D.J. Power
• A History of Spreadsheets at ICI in 1974 by Ken Dakin
• The History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets by Martin Campbell-Kelly, Mary Croarken, Raymond Flood, Eleanor Robson (Editors). (notice amazon.com)

General information

• A Spreadsheet Programming article on DevX
• comp.apps.spreadsheets FAQ by Russell Schulz
• Develop Training Simulations with Excel
• Extending the Concept of Spreadsheet by Jocelyn Paine
• Linux Spreadsheets by Christopher Browne; much general information on spreadsheets, and some on related Linux issues
• Spreadsheets category on the Open Directory Project
• Spreadsheet - Its First Computerization (1961-1964) by Richard Mattessich
• "Spreadsheet Wars" - A classic video showing spreadsheet vendors going head-to-head in the late 80's .
• href="http://www.yelavich.com/">http://www.yelavich.com/ CICS history and introduction of IBM 3270 by Bob Yelavich
• Autoplan & Autotab article by Creative Karma
• A Wikibooks tutorial on Microsoft EXCEL
• Video tutorials to help beginners learn Microsoft Excel

Research organizations

• European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (EuSpRIG)