Unit 2 · Topic 03 · Data Analysis and Representation (Google Sheets)
Twenty minutes of typing vanished when Pixel restarted itself.
Anaya stared at the empty screen.
Six stalls, six sets of sales, and one very old desktop that had chosen the worst possible moment.
The Diwali fair had six stalls: ladoo, lemonade, rangoli, ring toss, book swap and cards. Every stall had to report its sales by 4 pm.
Anaya had one notebook and one pen. She was also running the ladoo stall, so children queued twice — once for ladoos, once to report numbers.
"This is silly," said Kabir, standing in both queues at the same time.
Then Pixel restarted, and the typed-up half was gone.
Ms. Rao opened a web browser. No disc, no installing, no waiting. She signed in and opened Google Sheets: a grid of empty boxes filling the screen.
"Columns have letters," she said, pointing across the top. "Rows have numbers, down the side. So every box has a short name. This one is B3 — column B, row 3."
She shared the sheet with six laptops. Six children typed at once, from six corners of the hall. On Anaya's screen numbers appeared that she had not typed, with a small coloured mark showing who was typing them.
"Where do I put the ladoo total?" Anaya called.
"B2," said Ms. Rao. Not "the box near the top". B2. Everyone found the same box.
At 3:40 pm the electricity went. Pixel groaned and died dramatically.
Kabir opened the sheet again on a laptop, and every number was still there. Sheets had been saving to Google Drive by itself, after every change.
At 4 pm the sheet was complete. Total sales: ₹4,860. The lemonade stall, which everyone had laughed at, came second.
Google Sheets is a spreadsheet tool that runs inside a web browser. You do not install it, and it is free with a Google account.
A spreadsheet is a big grid of boxes called cells. Columns are named with letters across the top; rows are numbered down the side. The cell address joins them, column letter first: B3, D12. That short name lets two people talk about the same box without pointing.
Three things made the fair work. It autosaves to Google Drive after every change, so a dead machine loses nothing. It allows real-time collaboration — many people typing into one sheet at once. And once the data is in, the same grid can sort it, total it and chart it.
Open Google Sheets and make a new sheet. In A1 type Day, and in B1 type Minutes read.
Fill five days down column A and your minutes down column B. Now close the tab without saving anything, on purpose.
Open it again from Drive. Everything is there. Write down the address of the cell holding your biggest number.
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