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Spreadsheet Basics

🟨📊 Spreadsheet Basics

Skill: Reading, editing, and calculating with spreadsheet data
Tool: Excel / LibreOffice Calc
Why? So you can understand, explore, and even change the world using data — like discovering how food miles add up or which fish are most threatened!

🧠 What You’ll Learn

  • How spreadsheets work: cells, rows, columns
  • How to enter and read data
  • How to total numbers and calculate percentages
  • How to sort and filter information

🔧 Try It Out

Let’s say you’re looking at different fish species and how many are left in the oceans.

Here’s how your spreadsheet might look:

A B C
1 Fish Species Threat Level Number Left
2 Cod Medium 120000
3 Bluefin Tuna High 5000
4 Haddock Low 300000
5
6 Total Fish =C2+C3+C4
7 % Tuna =C3/C6*100

💡 Step-by-Step:

  1. Enter your data in cells A1 to C4.
  2. In cell C6, type:

=C2+C3+C4

This adds all the fish left together.

  1. In cell C7, type: =C3/C6*100 This finds what percentage of all the fish are Bluefin Tuna.

🧪 Practise This

You can try this with your own data!

🍎 Food Miles Example:

A B C
1 Food Country Miles Travelled
2 Apples UK 100
3 Bananas Ecuador 5600
4 Oranges Spain 900
5 Total =C2+C3+C4
6 % Local =C2/C5*100

Try changing the numbers to see how the totals and percentages change.

🔄 Sorting and Filtering

  • Sort your table by clicking:
    Data → Sort range → Sort by column C (Miles Travelled)

  • Filter by clicking the filter icon and choosing just one country or threat level to view.

🌱 Why This Matters

Spreadsheets help you make sense of the world with numbers. They let you find out which foods travel furthest, which fish need help, and where you can make a difference!

🔗 Linked Cards

Watch the video