Some work

To do both the quick and longer tasks below you’ll need:

a spreadsheet tool, such as Excel or Libre Office.
a copy of the course dataset, which is GRAIN’s data on “land grabbing” (available here).

Ready to make a mess? Let’s try and get into the minds of people who make spreadsheets as ugly as a stuffed toy puppy lamp.

In his excellent essay “The Art of Spreadsheets” John Raffensperger lists 37 ways that you can hide data in a spreadsheet. Here are 10 of them:

Do not share the file. This is the most common way of hiding information, and the most effective.
Hide the sheet. You need at least two sheets first, then: Format, Sheet, Hide.
Hide the row: Format, Row, Hide.
Hide the column: Format, Column, Hide.
Hide the cell and protect the sheet: Format, Cells, Protection, Hidden, then Tools, Protection. This shows a display, but hides the formula: =if(1, “Peace!”, “Attack at dawn.”).
Make the column too narrow: Format, Column, Width, 0.
For formulas that are likely to be zero, use Tools, Options, View, and clear the Zero values box. For example: =IF(1, 0, “Attack at dawn.”).
Use a formula that returns a blank: =IF(1, “ ”, “Attack at dawn.”).
Create a complicated formula that displays the information, but format it as text (with Format, Cells, Number, Text, or just start the cell with a single quotation mark), so the formula is displayed rather than the output.
Format the font with Wingdings: Format, Cells, Font, Wingdings. This displays unintelligible characters.

Using John Raffensperger’s list as inspiration, your task is to mess up the GRAIN data as much as possible. Marks will be awarded for:

making the presentation just bad enough that someone using the data might be tempted to think they can still use it!
the use of colour and font effects in ways that really offend the eye
ingenuity in hiding bits of data in plain sight.

When you’re finished making a mess, consider how you would undo it and persuade others not to treat their data in this way.

From the Data Wrangling Handbook Recipe on Data Cleaning, run through Problem 1: Showing the data plainly using the GRAIN data. This shows you how to remove formatting quickly. It is the first part of a longer ‘recipe’ on data cleaning.

A Gentle Introduction to Data Cleaning