Error-handling
To increase the difficulty of my project, I worked specifically on handling missing data and creating an interactive spreadsheet.
Some data are missing from the original dataset; a few countries do not have the per-capita GDP data for the first 20 years or the last 20 years. Consequently, some errors occur when I calculated the per-capita GDP growth rates. To address the errors in calculating the per-capita growth rates, I employed the function ISERROR. The idea behind it is that whenever an error is resulted from calculating the per-capita growth rates, I assign the string "" (ie. blank) to that cell. In other words, when users see a blank cell in the "GDP Growth Rates(%)" spreadsheet, it means the corresponding data is not available in the original dataset.
Because of the missing data in the original dataset, errors can also occur in the "General_Compare" spreadsheet. For example, per-capita GDP data for the counrty Armenia is incomplete; when we select Armenia in the drop-down list in the "General_Compare" spreadsheet, the first 20 columns will be blank as in the figure below. To address this problem and to acknowledge the incomplete data, I wrote a function to display the message "This country has an incomplete Growth Rates dataset, as a result part of the General_Compare spreadsheet is blank".
Some data are missing from the original dataset; a few countries do not have the per-capita GDP data for the first 20 years or the last 20 years. Consequently, some errors occur when I calculated the per-capita GDP growth rates. To address the errors in calculating the per-capita growth rates, I employed the function ISERROR. The idea behind it is that whenever an error is resulted from calculating the per-capita growth rates, I assign the string "" (ie. blank) to that cell. In other words, when users see a blank cell in the "GDP Growth Rates(%)" spreadsheet, it means the corresponding data is not available in the original dataset.
Because of the missing data in the original dataset, errors can also occur in the "General_Compare" spreadsheet. For example, per-capita GDP data for the counrty Armenia is incomplete; when we select Armenia in the drop-down list in the "General_Compare" spreadsheet, the first 20 columns will be blank as in the figure below. To address this problem and to acknowledge the incomplete data, I wrote a function to display the message "This country has an incomplete Growth Rates dataset, as a result part of the General_Compare spreadsheet is blank".