Simon Willison’s Weblog

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Ambsheets: Spreadsheets for exploring scenarios (via) Delightful UI experiment by Alex Warth and Geoffrey Litt at Ink & Switch, exploring the idea of a spreadsheet with cells that can handle multiple values at once, which they call "amb" (for "ambiguous") values. A single sheet can then be used to model multiple scenarios.

Here the cell for "Car" contains {500, 1200} and the cell for "Apartment" contains {2800, 3700, 5500}, resulting in a "Total" cell with six different values. Hovering over a calculated highlights its source values and a side panel shows a table of calculated results against those different combinations.

Spreadsheet showing budget items with values in cells: Column A shows Budget, Car, Apartment, Netflix, and TOTAL. Column B shows values including x̄ = 850 for Car with values 500 and 1,200; x̄ = 4,000 for Apartment with values 2,800, 3,700, and 5,500; Netflix shows 18; TOTAL row shows x̄ = 4,868 with values 3,318, 4,218, 6,018, 4,018, 4,918, and 6,718. Right side shows formula =sum(b3:b5), TABLE with aggregate avg dropdown, and STACKS visualization of the values.

Always interesting to see neat ideas like this presented on top of UIs that haven't had a significant upgrade in a very long time.

Posted 5th February 2025 at 2:50 am

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