Matthew Donnalley

INLS 161 website

Task ④ ⇒ spreadsheets

You are to download and modify several existing worksheets to make them a more useful product. To be specific, these worksheets from a variety of publicly available data provided by the US government in spreadsheet form.

The task will require you to construct a workbook that can be used both as an electronic spreadsheet and as a paper product, capable of being easily used by a busy executive. The final workbook will include:

15 worksheets, each containing statistical data (numerical and/or textual) about a variety of topics.

You are to modify 12 worksheets in some fashion to make them more useful both as an electronic and as a paper product. You will be expected to create 4 additional worksheets by copying and modifying one or more of the provided worksheets.

Some worksheets will be modified specifically to make the data in them more visible. This may include converting data already in the worksheet to different kinds of data; may include using one or more of the tools to manipulate the data; or may include using your formatting skills to tidy up some spreadsheet inefficiencies.

You will also create several charts based on the worksheets and add these charts to the workbook.

Everything in this task is something we will have demonstrated and/or tried in class.

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Condition

There are several different commercial spreadsheet software applications, and you may use the one of your choice. However, I will have to be able to open the file using either MSOffice or OpenOffice.

Working in groups for tasks

You may work on task 03, 04, and 05 in groups. You may, if you choose to, also do task 06 as a group project. These are some rules of thumb to follow for group work in INLS161.

Note who your work group members are and be sure you know them by face and by email address. As you work together, I would like you to follow this process for your work:

every member of the group should do all the components of the task. Do not parcel out portions of the task to individuals
once you have all done as much as you can on the task, share your work - either as email attachments, as Google Docs, as Dropbox items, or in person
look over what your peers have done in comparison to what you have done and, if needed, modify your version accordingly
once all of you have compared your versions, determine among yourselves which version is the one you want to turn in to be graded
one individual will store the version to be graded in their Sakai dropbox and that individual will put a hyperlink to that file on their task 04 web page
that individual who stores the task that is to be graded will send the full path to that file to the other group members so they will have an absolute link to the stored file that they may use on their individual task web pages.