hoytpr
commented
2 years ago Hi @jwrigs and thanks for your suggestion. I'm a lucky maintainer of this core lesson, and you're correct that we could add more about the date function, but the problem is that this lesson is already pretty long. When you went through the lesson, was there something you think we should take out to replace with more on data function?
This lesson is considered "mature" or "stable" (meaning it's been curated a lot), but we always want to be current so your suggestion is reasonable (meaning that it is within the scope of teaching how to use spreadsheets for downstream data, rather than as data processing tools), and is taken seriously. I also have many clients, can you give a specific example of what you think should be included? If you have and example, is it consistent across most spreadsheet software?
Thanks again and I look forward to hearing from you.
jwrigs
Hello! This was a great lesson to demo.
One item I ran into as both a learner myself and an instructor is the the DATE function. The lesson sort of slides over it in "Dates as Data" episode. DATE is such an odd function for most folks. Yet, it seems like it should be intuitive based on the name. There are two reasons for adding a bit more for the DATE function.
Reason 1
The data function allows us to deal with weird things and dates that may not be strictly numerical (ex. Leap Years). It allows us to calculate with dates as well as display them
Reason 2
Although having all the date fields in one column is not ideal - it's often how secondary users (ex. clients) like it formatted for final outputs. Therefore, it's really useful to include a brief direction for the DATE function. This could be super short at the very end of the lesson and emphasized to be part of a final, human-readable product rather than for analysis-friendly sheets. It could even have a quick exercise-solution box.
Thanks for considering and making a great lesson!