I was struck by this passage from Steven Levy's 1984 A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge:
Yet what really has the spreadsheet users charmed is not the hard and fast figures but the “what if” factor: the ability to create scenarios, explore hypothetical developments, try out different options. The spreadsheet, as one executive put it, allows the user to create and then experiment with “a phantom business within the computer.”
It struck me after reading this that the what-if scenarios they're talking about are anemic. The value in what-if scenarios is comparison, being able to see what would change given different circumstances. But the spreadsheet's what-if only lets you change one thing at a time, see what happens, then switch back to the original (cmd-z?) and see how it compares.
To explore this idea, I made a spreadsheet that lets you create side-by-side copies and play with them. This solidifies them and makes them a thing you can refer to instead of just a temporary change.
