Excel Professional – Types of Data

Above I have reproduced a 1-page outline of a project I need to build. There’s no meed for you to read my handwriting at this stage, and we will be coming back to this image.

If you mention “types of data’ to a computer-geek, they will flood you with a discussion of character versus numeric, integer, real, double, single and so on.

Not me.

I want you to start thinking of your data in terms of what it can do for you.

Since the dawn of computing it has been thus: We Process Data to obtain Information. Or, if you prefer:

Data (Processed) gives Information.

Human animals are built this way; we take in data through our eyes, process the data, and gain the information that we should run away (if it is a tiger) or run towards it (if it is a rabbit). Note in passing that this presupposes that we have a pre-defined stored definition of Tiger is Nasty and Rabbit is Tasty.

I propose to you that you think of FOUR types of data:

(1) Input. This is the data that the user will key in to the program from the outside world. In my example it will be the names of the travellers and their passport numbers , email and telephone addresses.

(2) Parameters. (Tiger is nasty!) This is data that remains constant with repeated uses of the program. A good example is “The number of passengers we can fit into an SUV” or “The going daily rate for travel guides”. These figures may change over time, but infrequently whe compared to issuing a new quotation for a new group of travellers.

(3) Calculation. Also known as Proessing. We take the data from the previous two sections and do something with them to get information. As en example we might count the number of names of travellers, which tells us how many travellers we have, then we might divide that number by “The number of passengers we can fit into an SUV” and arrive at a value that tells us how many SUVs we will need to rent.

(4) Output. Generally we do not wish to show all the internal workings of our program to the outside world, so we use an Output Area to collect the salient points from our calculations. In this section you might see items such as “Total number of travellers” without the detals of each traveller. “Total Cost With Taxes” is sure to be on this page!

Above is an overview of three sheets of paper. I think that will suffice for this little project.

The Input sheet (to the left) doesn’t have much to say.

The Parameter sheet (middle) has data in groups.

The Calculation sheet (right) is what people think of mostly when they rush to the computer.

Sigh!

Next Step: