one thing i've learned since joining the bookish community is that people track their reading in all sorts of ways. i love seeing beautiful bullet journal spreads and aesthetic notion set-ups, and those are awesome as they're highly customizable, and therefore subjective depending on the person. one of the ways that i've seen people tracking their reading recently is through spreadsheets, especially when it comes to keeping track of reviews, ratings, and what you have to read. while i am very dedicated to my bullet journal (lite) and planner (it's a long-term committed relationship, nobody's gonna come between me and my analog system!), i have actually been loving spreadsheets lately for calculating and tracking statistics. here, i'll show you the key formulas i use to create reading statistics in google sheets. i'm a numbers geek, after all. how have i gone this long without showing you guys how i calculate those numbers i include in my wrap-ups? one important clarification i want to make before going on with the tutorial is that pretty much any spreadsheet software will do. you can do this with google sheets (free) or microsoft excel if you have a copy. i'm also an extra weirdo because i'm planning on mocking up some graphs in python, which is my preferred graphing tool. i thought i'd make a tutorial in google sheets of that original statistics first since it's the most easily accessible one, and can be a jumping point for fancier stats and graphs. plus, all you need to access sheets is a google account! note: all of the below formulas also work in excel if you have access to it and would prefer an offline (and private) way of making this sheet. let's start with a basic overview(if this is difficult to see due to font size, please message me and i will send you a bigger version!) this is what my reading statistics sheets looked like for the month of september. to orient yourself, make sure you keep track of that formula bar at the top, which will be your best friend when it comes to the calculations at the bottom. offset by one column (to make row titles at the bottom) i made three columns for 1) pages in the book 2) the days it took me to finish the book and finally 3) my star rating. i don't bother with the titles or authors because those are all written in my planner, but feel free to type them into the column on the right if you feel the need! there are also plenty of other statistics you can calculate, but these are the three i use that also show you the best of the basics when it comes to formula calculations. all of that information is put in by me. this doesn't take a lot of time because i track those numbers in my bujo throughout the month. if you use goodreads, it can tell you the number of pages in a book (in case you read an audiobook/ebook), how many days it took you to read that book (if you update your goodreads regularly), and of course will record your star rating (if you gave one). this can be a little time consuming so if you're not for punching in numbers then this method might not be for you. once you have all this information inputted (plus any other numbers you want to add in!), you're good to go! what i especially like about spreadsheets is that you can change values after you've made the calculations, and the calculation will automatically update. this means that if you mis-enter any information, there's no need to go back and redo the calculation, which is handy when you've accidentally entered a 6 star rating (as i've done many many times). this is all to say don't stress if your numbers aren't final before you make the calculation! note: you can always add columns and rows by right-clicking the row (e.g. 1, 2, 3) or column (e.g. A, B, C) and selecting 'insert column/row'. calculate the average amount of pages per book
calculate the total number of pages read
calculate the average number of pages read per day
calculate the total number of books read
let's get fancy: calculations without outliers
1. select desired cell for without outliers calculation 2. enter "=average(" 3. select the desired range. in this case, the first two were considered outliers. if there are outliers in the middle of the data range, simply click the first cell, hold shift, then the last cell before the outlier, and press ',' (comma). you can then select another range of data. 4. hit enter and that's how i calculate all my statistics! these numbers are fun to come up with at the end of the month, and definitely something to be proud of no matter how much you read. since i do this monthly, what i hope to do is compile all those calculations into another sheet to compare averages and other statistics over the month. i think it's really cool to see the numbers like that, and compare and contrast different statistics for months (e.g. i read a less books in september but the average pages per book in that month were longer than i typically read). either way, it's kind of fun when you get the hang of it!
i do want to note (rather belatedly) that the only calculation i do by hand in the 'calculations' section of the sheet is the number of audiobooks read. i denote that in my reading log, and i don't usually listen to too many audiobooks, so it's easy for me to just look at my reading log and count up the audiobooks. i don't do anything fancy with calculating how many hours i listened to an audiobook, but i do count them as pages read! i'll be revealing my numbers for my october reads (spoiler alert: there were more than twenty!) in my next booktube video, so please stay tuned for that. otherwise, i hope this helped you get started with calculating your own reading statistics and motivates you to maybe sum up your months with some numbers. if you have any other questions, please feel free to message me on twitter or instagram, and i hope you all have a lovely rest of your day!
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hi, i'm mari, and i'm a STEM grad student, i watch baseball, and i read... a lot of books. i hope you learn some-thing new while you're here!
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