NEXCEL, a deductive spreadsheet

Abstract

Usability and usefulness have made the spreadsheet one of the most successful computing applications of all times: millions rely on it every day for anything from typing grocery lists to developing multimillion dollar budgets. One thing spreadsheets are not very good at is manipulating symbolic data and helping users make decisions based on them. By tapping into recent research in Logic Programming, Databases and Cognitive Psychology, we propose a deductive extension to the spreadsheet paradigm which addresses precisely this issue. The accompanying tool, which we call NEXCEL, is intended as an automated assistant for the daily reasoning and decision-making needs of computer users, in the same way as a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel assists them every day with calculations simple and complex. Users without formal training in Logic or even Computer Science can interactively define logical rules in the same simple way as they define formulas in Excel. NEXCEL immediately evaluates these rules thereby returning lists of values that satisfy them, again just like with numerical formulas. The deductive component is seamlessly integrated into the traditional spreadsheet so that a user not only still has access to the usual functionalities, but is able to use them as part of the logical inference and, dually, to embed deductive steps in a numerical calculation.

How people do relational reasoning? Role of problem complexity and domain familiarity

“…In the probabilistic approach to human reasoning, Oaksford and Chater argue that people utilize strategies from everyday reasoning while they solve reasoning tasks in the laboratory (Oaksford & Chater, 2001, 2007. We wonder if people do the same while they do relational reasoning.…”

“…In fact, there is currently no simple and general application that empowers users to compute useful inferences on raw data. Cervesato (2007Cervesato ( , 2013 addressed this problem by drawing inspiration from a type of automated data inference that is immensely popular: the spreadsheet. Applications such as Microsoft Excel and others are readily available and allow users to routinely perform complex custom calculations on numerical data.…”

“…However, none of the above data manipulation problems is expressible in today's spreadsheets. The approach investigated in the cited work, which was dubbed NEXCEL in (Cervesato, 2007), remedies this situation by extending the spreadsheet paradigm to enable users to define useful forms of inference among their data. It allows the student, for example, to download data about course prerequisites and offerings into his favorite spreadsheet, and write a ''formula'' that calculates all possible course sequences.…”

“…The closest studies we are aware of are Johnson-Laird's analysis of how people fare with various forms of logical inferences (Johnson-Laird, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.09.015 0747-5632/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1983, 2006Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991;Johnson-Laird, Byrne, & Schaeken, 1992) and Oaksford and Chater's probabilistic approach to human reasoning (Oaksford & Chater, 2001, 2007, 2009.…”

Enhanced Spreadsheet Computing with Finite Domain Constraint Satisfaction

“…The Knowledgesheet application [3] a precursor to NExSched, also uses a finite domain constraint solver with java spreadsheet interface to solve constraint satisfaction problems. Another proposed spreadsheet enhancement is NEXCEL [20,21] which proposes a deductive extension of the spreadsheet paradigm for the purpose of reasoning and decision-making. NEXCEL allows users to define logical inference rules for the purpose of symbolic reasoning, with values satisfying these rules being visualized dynamically and propagated to cells that depend on these rules.…”