A feature in MS-Excel helping in decision making by observing the effect of…

Concept

Some spreadsheet features exist purely to support decision making: instead of just storing or displaying data, they let you ask cause-and-effect questions of the form “if these input conditions change, how do the dependent results change?” You deliberately vary the values in one set of cells and watch the values computed by formulas in another set respond, so you can compare possible situations before you commit to a decision.

In MS-Excel this capability is provided by the What-If Analysis tools. They take changed inputs and recompute every formula that depends on them, which is exactly the behaviour the question describes — observing the effect of a change in one data set on another data set.

The What-If Analysis tools

Excel groups three What-If Analysis tools under the Data tab:

• Scenario Manager — store and compare several named sets of input values and view the resulting outputs side by side.

• Goal Seek — fix a desired result and let Excel work backwards to find the input value that produces it.

• Data Table — show, in a grid, how changing one or two inputs changes a formula across a whole range of values.

Distinguishing the other features

Each remaining choice is a genuine Excel feature, but none models the effect of changing inputs on dependent outputs:

• Data filter only hides or shows existing rows that meet a criterion; it never recomputes outputs from changed inputs.

• Charting only visualises data that already exists; it presents values rather than exploring how they would change.

• Data series is just an ordered sequence of values (for example, the points behind a chart or an autofill pattern); it is not a decision-analysis tool.