Can all of life’s problems be solved within a spreadsheet? Perhaps not. But they do serve as a surprisingly useful tool for thinking through many of them. Within the matrix, you can list what you know, organize your thoughts and transform information to solve so many different problems. I have been told countless times that spreadsheet enthusiasts are sure fun at parties. I like to take that for face value. 

For this series, I am using Google Sheets for a number of reasons. First, it is a free tool that can be closed and opened on any computer. Also you can collaborate with many people, which is a highly useful tool for working through information as a group such as in planning a trip. Lastly are the more esoteric reasons for Google sheets using a more contemporary approach to data rather than through tools that only exist within the Microsoft ecosystem. 

In this series, I hope to share how to think about and organize ideas in spreadsheets as well as master the tool sets that make spreadsheets a powerful problem solving tool. Note that spreadsheets work like lego blocks. There is no correct way to arrive at a solution, but you will eventually learn that some solutions make more sense than others. The order of lessons will begin with 1) pattern recognition, elementary data analysis, transforming data, and eventually making or importing data sets.