What tool has uses for both the U.S. Army and the Stanford Computer Science Department?
“There are many cases where traditional spreadsheets are just not sufficient,” says Associate Professor Michael Genesereth, whose group in the Computer Science Department is developing this new method of data management. “Why not have a spreadsheet that looks just like a regular spreadsheet except it has the ability to encode and use logical formulas? That’s what you can’t do with Excel in any way today.” Microsoft Excel, the most popular and widely used traditional spreadsheet, is the closest competitor to a logical spreadsheet. While Excel is useful, situations exist when it is beneficial to have logical expressions supplant mathematical formulae. Under the guidance of Genesereth, doctoral candidate Michael Kassoff has been investigating the concept of logical spreadsheets since coming to Stanford in 2001. “They use symbols instead of numbers, and what that allows you to do is to talk about not just numerical expressions, like if you’re doing taxes, but you can also talk about things
