Adding Calculations to Worksheets

Calculations can play an important part when analyzing data. Discoverer has a full range of common mathematical functions and operators to calculate results on your worksheets. Discoverer displays the results of calculations as new columns on a worksheet, or the calculations can be part of other calculations.

Click to learn more about
Creating and Editing Calculations

See also:
Pivoting Data
Drilling Into and Out of the Data
Duplicating Tables and Crosstabs
Sorting Data
Totaling Numeric Data
Calculating Percentages
Displaying Existing Percentages
Calculation Examples

Here is an example of a simple calculation.

Example: Calculate a royalty of 6% on the sum of the profits.

This example uses the Profit SUM data item and multiplies it by .06 to produce the royalty rate. The answer appears in a new column with a name you type on the New Calculation dialog. In this example it is Royalty Fees.

The following figure shows the results of applying the calculation.

Not all calculations need to use Items or Functions as part of the calculation formula. You can type a formula directly into the Calculation box.

Creating and Editing Calculations

You use the Calculations dialog to create calculations.

To create or edit a calculation:

1. Open the worksheet on which you want to apply the calculation.

2. Choose Tools | Calculations. The Edit Worksheet dialog appears, open to the Calculations tab.

   
   

   This dialog shows calculations already created for the worksheet. Checkmarked calculations are active and apply to the worksheet.

3. Click New or Edit. The New or Edit Calculation dialog appears.

4. Type a name for the calculation in the box at the top of the dialog. This name appears on the worksheet as the column header of the calculation results column.

5. Click the Show drop-down list to see the different expressions.

   Functions--Lists a wide range of mathematical functions that you can apply to the formula.

   Selected Items--Lists the items in the worksheet; this is helpful because you don't have to remember the name of an item in order to include it in a formula.

   Available Items--Lists all the items available for the worksheet even if the items are not currently used on the worksheet.

   Calculations--Lists the calculations defined for the worksheet in case you want to use an existing calculation as part of your new calculation.

   Parameters--Lists the parameters defined for the worksheet.

6. Click each part of the expression that you want to add to the calculation and click Paste. The item or function moves to the Calculation text box. You can also drag from the box on the left to the Calculation text box.

7. Click the operator (for example, + or -) button to add mathematical operations to the Calculation text box.

8. Continue to add items, functions, operators, and so forth until you complete your calculation expression.

9. Click OK to save the expression. The Edit Worksheet dialog appears and displays the name of the calculation you just created or edited.

10. To apply the calculation to your worksheet, make sure it has a checkmark in the box next to its name.

11. Click OK.