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Ambsheets: Spreadsheets for Exploring Scenarios

Ambsheets is a research project about new kinds of spreadsheets for exploring possibility spaces and making better decisions.

(Amb is shorthand for “ambiguous”, and is a reference to the nondeterministic evaluator from Abelson and Sussman’s Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.) For example, if you’re choosing among different Netflix plans, you could turn the last budget item into an amb value, resulting in a 3-dimensional possibility space. That covers the basics of amb values, but many questions remain if we want to grow this kernel into a powerful medium for exploring scenarios.

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