Context in Spreadsheet Comprehension

Even though spreadsheet programs traditionally concentrate on exploration and computation of data (the author’s view), a non-trivial proportion of spreadsheets are used for communicating data, models, and decisions to humans who assume the role of a spreadsheet reader. The communicative use of spreadsheets gives the spreadsheet context, that is, the background knowledge needed to interpret and make sense of its content, a very important role. Indeed, many ‘spreadsheet errors’ can be traced to mis-interpretations due to context failures. In this paper we report on a set of experiments we conducted to get a deeper understanding of the context in spreadsheet comprehension, focusing on the different perspectives authors and readers take in understanding spreadsheets. The results confirm missing context information as a likely source for semantic spreadsheet errors. Moreover, they lead to an extension and refinement of already established context dimensions.