Q20 (2025) Enterprise Computing

A marine biologist uses a spreadsheet to analyse past data such as water temperature, pollution levels and availability of food to predict fish population trends.

Describe spreadsheet features that can assist the marine biologist to better understand the datasets visually. (3 marks)

Clues in the scenario. The biologist has past data on water temperature, pollution and food, and wants to see fish population trends. Use these exact kinds of data in your examples.

The content it draws on

Data visualisation / Using data to tell a story

Software such as spreadsheets has tools that turn data into visuals, which make patterns easier to see and help people track trends and make forecasts.

Data visualisation / Interpreting data visualisations

You should be able to judge how well a software tool shows data, and whether it suits the data and the person using it.

How it connects to the question. Both points are about software tools that help people see what data means. This question asks you to describe those tools inside a spreadsheet for one real user and their data.

The learning outcome EC-12-05

Students use software tools and resources to work through and make sense of large, complex sets of data, so they can find patterns and use them to decide what to do.

“spreadsheet features” points to tools and resources. Charts, conditional formatting and pivot tables are the tools the outcome means.
“better understand the datasets visually” points to analyse complex datasets. Seeing the data as a picture is one way to analyse it.
“water temperature, pollution levels and availability of food” points to complex datasets. Several kinds of data recorded over time make this dataset complex.

Proposed link. NESA has not published the outcome mapping for this paper yet.

Write your answer

Write your own answer first. We keep it, show what counts and what does not, then coach you from where you are. You can switch at any time and keep what you wrote.

Your marks so far

Name visual spreadsheet featuresNot yet
Say what each showsNot yet
Use the biologist's dataNot yet

Next, try: Name the spreadsheet features that turn numbers into something you can see.

Soft colours are a quick guess as you type. Only Check my answer can say a mark is earned.

Write your answer to the question