\ans
Dates are represented by numbers (usually, in fact, as the number of days
since January 1, 1900) for a good reason. If we want a date to increase by
one week, it's a lot easier to just add 7  to it than to try and figure out
if the month ended or if we're in a new year or whatever. Adding seven is
easy. Keeping a calendar in your head is hard.

Of course, most of the time we don't {\em see} the number; we see
something like "Jan 11, 1984". It's useful to know that there's a number
hiding underneath, though, so you can figure out what's going on when
things get messed up.

\ans

Absolutely! How smart of you to notice!! When we discussed the
essential things a computer can deal with, we talked about numbers,
text (often stored in ASCII form) and commands.  Spreadsheets are a
special way of organizing the computer's memory to handle these basic
elements we already know.

\ans 
You're not. You can, of course, guess, but most spreadsheets have an
"AutoFit" feature that automatically finds the widest cell in a column and
changes the column so it fits.

\ans
Textual attributes, like boldface and italics and the color red, change the
appearance of {\em whatever shows up in the cell}. Changing the cell
formatting actually changes {\em what is going to show up in the cell}.

\ans
Not really, but good question anyway. Here's a useful experiment:
\begin{itemize}
\item Enter the number 36000 into a cell
\item Change the formatting of the cell to be a percentage
\item Change the formatting of the cell to be of type date
\end{itemize}

Remember, the underlying data (the number 36000) never changes; only what
we see on the screen changes.

\ans
Don't ask, just try it! The machine doesn't bite, and you can always use
the Edit:Undo command.

The quick answer, for those of you without a machine in front of you, is "yes".

\ans We need a formula character at the beginning of every formula, first
and foremost, so the spreadsheet knows it's a formula and not just normal
text.

\ans Your first step should {\em always} be to check the online help. Try
a search on the word "function".

\ans Good question. Think of it this way:

If someone asks you how to get to Hal O'Gen's house, you could say "Go to
1215 West Seventh Street" (absolute directions), or you could say "Go two
blocks up and three blocks over" (directions relative to where you're
standing right now).

By default, spreadsheets use the relative directions. When you copy the
formula around, it is changed in whatever way is necessary to preserve the
relative relationships.

\ans I've tended to use absolute addressing mostly for "rates". Tax rates,
interest rates, commission rates -- all are things that you probably want
to apply to a large set of numbers.

\ans NOOOOOOOOOO! If you do that, you lose the ability to ask some very
important "What if...?" questions -- like, "How much money can the company
save if we lower the commission rate to 7.5\%?". If you keep the rate in
exactly one place, you can easily change it and then watch those changes
propagate through the rest of the spreadsheet. If you put it in the
formula, it's hard to change and/or track down.

\ans
``=B6*C\$3'' is the best answer for this particular spreadsheet.

Notice when we were copying stuff DOWN, the C part of ``C3'' never
caused us any trouble.  Since we were copying the formula from column
C to Column C  (from C to shining C?), the reference to C didn't
absolutely HAVE to be locked.  The 3 part was the thing causing us
trouble, so we {\em had} to lock it up.  Every great once in a while
you might come across a situation where you have to lock just part of
a cell reference like this.  Don't worry about it.  Just remember that
it is possible so you can try it someday when nothing else works.