After attending several MUN conferences, I finally began to have a grasp of what builds a good conference. The Tally Sheet is a crucial part of the conference where chairs, the head of each committee, keeps track of the participation rate of each delegate (country). In STMUN XI, which was the conference I hosted back in December 2019, I created a rather elementary tally sheet. As shown in Image 1, the conditional formatting assigns a different color based on the participation of each delegate (with red being the least participation and blue being the most). However, I soon realized a small flaw; even with the coded colors, it remained difficult for chairs to identify the most/least active delegate with a quick glance.
At STMUN XII, I decided to seek ways to sort the delegations based on their participation. I realized that some conferences uses the VLOOKUP function, but I did some research and found an easier way to do so, which is by using the SORT function on Google Sheets. By overcoming the previous weakness of not being able to pinpoint delegate activity by one glance, I was able to develop new skills in utilizing Google Sheet to its fullest potential.
The SORT function works two ways:
- directly sorting numbers from biggest to smallest or vice versa
- sorting another column based on the column containing numbers
The sort function looks similar to something like this: =SORT (range, sort_column, is_ascending) Image 2 shows the upgraded version of the Tally Sheet for STMUN XII, where the delegates were sorted from the most participating to the least. Conditional formatting is once again implemented (Data > Conditional Formatting > Color Scale > *select desired range* > *select color*). I would call this a rather serendipitous discovery since I have been finding a way to create a more useful tally sheet for a long time but had not been able to come up with a solution.
As shown above, two functions were used in cells G3 and H3. In G3, the function reads =SORT (A3:A, E3:E, False). In H3, the function reads =SORT (E3:E, 1, False). “False” in the function means that the sorting is not ascending. In other words, the numbers in column E are being sorted from the biggest to smallest, or in a descending manner. The “1” in the function in H3 indicates that the column being sorted is the same as the reference column, which is both E3:E.
I think it takes creativity to think outside of the box and seek my own solution. When I first observed another conference sorting the participation, I click on the cell to see the Google Sheet function they implemented but was instantly intimidated by the long thread of codes. Now, I finally found a silver lining in simplicity and realized how I was able to come up with my solution. I envision myself continuing my exploration of Google Sheet functions because one, they’re incredibly fun; and two, they make life so much easier.