In a previous post from a few weeks ago, I mentioned how I was getting ready to do my annual tabulation of determining the year's top songs, using readily available data. I then see how accurate my calculations are based on the official determination from Billboard magazine. This year, I was planning on doing so in a different way. Instead of using my usual pencil, paper, and calculator, I was going to make a spreadsheet. This would be my first one ever. I consider myself fortunate in never having to create a spreadsheet before now. Since I might by making a major career change soon, I thought in would be prudent to learn. Even after I got my computer, I never really bothered looking over the spreadsheet app. It was just one of the extra apps I never thought I would use. Well, it was time for a change. I looked over the scant information I had to work in the Mac spreadsheet app, Numbers. Apparently, many of the guides I have guess that people would already know much about such apps from work and such. People just needed to learn a few tricks specific to Macs. For the neophyte like me, this is a slight problem. I started a new document, and I quickly became lost. Sure, it is easy enough to set up the fifty-four columns I would need, but the rows weren't so easy. I started out with sixty, since that was about the minimum for the last few years of songs that made the top ten lists each week. The first real problem was making the columns the correct width. The title column needed to be wider, but the weekly point total columns could be narrower. I don't think I made each one the exact same width, but they are close. What surprised me was when my Mac suddenly filled in the columns headers with the correct information, including the weeks in numerical order. I was doing it a column at a time, so I was surprised when it did it one its own. As I progressed through each week, I had a different problem--filling in all the extra zeroes for the songs the weren't in the top ten for each week. I finally found out about the "Autofill" feature that made everything so much easier. As long as I had the settings correct. I sometimes had the wrong numbers keyed up and I would have to go back to correct things. Still, I pushed through. Normally, it only takes me about one-and-a-half hours or so to make out my list. This time around, it took me over two hours, spread out over a day, to complete the thing. The final hurdle was the final totals column. It took me a few tries to figure out the best way to get the computer to add all of the pertinent columns together to get the final totals I needed to determine the best songs of the year. Songs with short stays were easy. I could do those without help. Songs that stayed months in the top ten needed the automatic "Sum" feature. I am not sure I did it right for each song. On occasion, I would wind up changing one of the figures while highlighting the right columns to total. Yes, I know that there are multiple ways to get the to work out, but I was most comfortable doing it by the way I found out. Still, I finished. By my interpretation of the date, The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" would be the number one song of the year. And I was right, but then I already knew that. Billboard had already posted that info a few days before I started my own work. They are early this year. For some stupid reason, they decided to end the year after only fifty-one weeks of charts, instead of the more expected fifty-two. I didn't know that fact when I made my list, so I had to go back and delete a column. I think the "Sum" function was still working, so the totals will be correct, but that wasn't my last problem. I had to delete on last title as well, as it technically didn't make the list. Also, there might have been two songs with the same title that made the top ten. Since I didn't include artists in my list, I had no way of knowing if the two songs were the same or not. A song could have debuted in the top ten, drop out, and then come back. To be fair, I combined the data for the two instances. I don't remember a song with that title for this year, but then my favorite radio station, WQHY 95.5, doesn't always play hard rap/hip-hop songs, even when they are very popular. I would only hear this if a tuned into one of the few local stations that would play those songs, or wait until a few Sirius satellite radio trial came around. I would have included the spreadsheet here, but it would be all but impossible. For one, it is huge. Over eighty rows by fifty-three columns. (There were a lot of songs the barely spent any time in the top ten this year. Way more than average.). I don't think the entire spreadsheet could fit all at once, even if I shrank it. I could have taken a screen shot, but that would require at least four pics just to get it all in. This post simply doesn't have the space. Furthermore, Mac documents are notorious for not being easily transferred to other formats. While I could export it, I am not sure which format would work best for here. I would rather just say I made the spreadsheet, and have everyone just assume I did it, instead of messing up and showing something that was posted in error, with who knows how many mistakes in it. So, just trust me in this. I made my first spreadsheet.
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