This time of year, some people’s thoughts turn to major sporting events….. and wagering on them. Because of trademark restrictions, I won’t name any specific one, but some people race owls, so I’ll use a hypothetical “Superb Owl” competition, which gets played in 4 quarters.
This brings us to Microsoft Excel and the worksheet you can download here. Feel free to edit the sheet to insert the teams of your choice. Let’s say the two teams are the Barred Owls from the National Flying Conference, and the Snowy Owls, from the American Flying Conference. As your coworkers place their wagers (you enter the cost of a wager in P8), enter their names into the grid of 100 squares, with each box indicating a possible score. So F10 would be a score of 7-3, with the Nationals leading. If the score is in the double digits, we use just the second digit.
Down columns O and P, enter the score at the end of each quarter. Using a horrific, mind-bending formula that mashes up the INDEX, MATCH, VALUE, IF, LEN and RIGHT functions, column R determines who won at the end of each quarter. Since people can buy more than one square, you can add up their wins and losses down column Q.
Of course this is just for fun and not to encourage gambling. Check your local laws for what is or isn’t permissible. And may the best owls win!
To get up to speed quickly in Excel, check out Excel 2016 Formulas and Functions in 90 Minutes.