What we understand is what we get: Assessment in Spreadsheets

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the SACHS system's ability to improve understanding of spreadsheets, demonstrating its benefits and limitations in providing explanations for financial controlling data.

Contribution

It introduces an assessment module for SACHS to enhance spreadsheet comprehension and evaluates its effectiveness in a financial context.

Findings

SACHS significantly improves spreadsheet understanding

The system misses some important explanation classes

Assessment module provides a first step towards better evaluation

Abstract

In previous work we have studied how an explicit representation of background knowledge associated with a specific spreadsheet can be exploited to alleviate usability problems with spreadsheet-based applications. We have implemented this approach in the SACHS system to provide a semantic help system for spreadsheets applications. In this paper, we evaluate the (comprehension) coverage of SACHS on an Excel-based financial controlling system via a "Wizard-of-Oz" experiment. This shows that SACHS adds significant value, but systematically misses important classes of explanations. For judgements about the information contained in spreadsheets, we provide a first approach for an "assessment module" in SACHS.