| Spreadsheets can be used for lots of things including
modelling.
This means they can be used for problem solving or can be set up to predict
what will happen in the future.
 Businesses
often use spreadsheets to model financial situations. They
might want to know:
- How many items do they need to sell to break even?
- What will be the effect if the running costs increase?
- Predicting future sales
Alistair's spreadsheet was put together to store, organise and present
information but it can also be used as a simple model.
Spreadsheets
are also used to simulate real-life situations such as predicting traffic
flow for town planners. To be able to model this would be a huge advantage:
- It is safe
- In practical terms it would be difficult to achieve
in 'real life'
- Can easily change values and introduce different
variables
- It's fairly cheap
- You can repeat tests as many times as you want
That is the end of this module on spreadsheets. You have looked at
the following curriculum objectives:
Derive new information (e.g. formulas to calculate information, such as a total or average): Level 2
Derive new information (e.g. a spreadsheet to calculate results using conditional statements with logical operators and other formulas): Level 3
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