Abstract:
Spreadsheets were originally intended for business applications like finance, accounting, and so on. However, the ubiquity and simplicity of spreadsheet programs, in addition to their rich library of built-in functions, plotting capabilities, and other provided utilities, have made them attractive tools for education in engineering as well as other disciplines. This paper presents a brief description of the history of spreadsheets development, and a review of various applications that spreadsheets have in electrical engineering education, especially in the areas of control, electromagnetism, communications and signal processing, electronics, circuits and digital systems, neural networks, power systems, and other fields. The use of spreadsheets in mathematics and other sciences is briefly reviewed, and some possible future trends and applications are suggested.