insurance policy and premiums to provide a benefit of three times your total annual income. You could do this by switching to "row first" recalculation, so that the life insurance premium in month 1 could be based on the total income calculated in column N.
If you find yourself with a problem of conflicting requirements for "row first"
and "column first" recalculation, you can deal with these requirements, albeit awkwardly, by pressing I for an extra recalculation each time you change a value and look for recalculated results. But first make certain that your row and column conflict is not actually due to a "forward reference" or a "circular reference," as discussed below. these formulas will recalculate and display the correct value only if the order of recalculation is "row first." The other will never display the correct value after an automatic recalculation.
To see this, type >A1®2® and watch the screen. A1 becomes 2 and C1 be-comes 3, but both B1 and B2 remain at - 2. Press4 I and both B1 and B2 will be updated to - 3.
Now, type IGOR and note that the recalculation order indicator changes from C to R. Then type 3 ® and watch the screen. A1 becomes 3, C1 becomes 4, and now B2 becomes -4, but B1 remains at -3. You'll have to press I again before B1 will change to - 4.
If you change A1 again, B1 will display a value based on the previous contents of C1 and A1. The formula at B1 is an example of a forward reference. It con-tains a reference to an entry that will be recalculated after B1 is recalculated, regardless of whether you use row or column recalculation.
In extremely difficult cases, forward references may refer to other forward references, so that correct results can be obtained only with several recalcula-tions. If the cursor is not on A1, type >A1 Now try this example. Press
VisiCalc Summary
The foregoing examples have been somewhat artificial. You probably recog-nized the forward and circular references as soon as you typed them. If you are planning your work carefully, you shouldn't write such a formula, unless you do it purposely as a debugging tool. Some forward or circular references are not so obvious.
For example, suppose that you are projecting future profits, taking into ac-count various revenues and expenses. One of the expenses is employee salaries, and one part of salaries consists of profit-sharing. Unless you are careful, you may create a circular reference. Salaries with profit-sharing de-pend on profits, but profits dede-pend on expenses including salaries. To resolve this circularity, you must calculate a figure for profits before profit-sharing is taken out.
Once you are aware of the issues involved in recalculation, it is not difficult to avoid conflicts in the order of recalculation or forward and circular references.
Generally, these problems arise when you are working too quickly without a plan, or "patching" an existing layout on the electronic sheet. If your approach to the problem is orderly and well thought out, it is unlikely that you will en-counter any problems with recalculation.
Summary
Once again, we have covered a great deal of ground in this lesson. We con-centrated on a variety of techniques for using VisiCalc's flexible replicate com-mand as effectively as possible. We also discussed a number of new VisiCalc features, including the formatting of individual numbers and labels, and the re-lationship between global and local formats; the order in which VisiCalc calcu-lates and recalcucalcu-lates; built-in functions such as @SUM, and the special cases
@NA and @ERROR; the insert, delete, and move commands, which let you
"stretch" the sheet and manipulate entire rows or columns; and synchronized scrolling of the two screen windows.
We have covered most of the important concepts and features of VisiCalc, and you should be able to use VisiCalc to considerable advantage. In Lesson Four we will cover a number of other features and fine points of VisiCalc, in-cluding scientific notation for numbers as well as the transcendental func-tions such as @EXP, @LN, @SIN, and @COS. You will also learn more about the formatting of numbers and the move command.
With the amount you have learned about VisiCalc, this is an excellent time to test your understanding on a problem of your own. In this way, you will con-solidate your knowledge of VisiCalc's commands and features, and develop your own ideas about how they can be used. This will enable you to approach new problems and solve them even more rapidly with VisiCalc.
Postscript: The Print Command Lesson Three Postscript: The Print Command
Sometimes it's convenient to have a "hard copy" of the contents of the elec-tronic sheet on a real sheet of paper. VisiCalc's print command lets you print all or any part of the electronic sheet on a printer. If you have a printer con-nected to your computer, you can try it out by printing a copy of the personal budget we've just created.
The instructions for printing files you have made with VisiCalc are in Part III of this manual, in the section entitled "The PRINT Command." Note as well that using a ISS to a printer is a good debugging tool, particularly in uncover-ing circular references.