[areyousure]

I have wanted one general application of this idea in a spreadsheet. Specifically, I track some of my running, including speed (pace), distance, and time. Under different circumstances, I have exactly two of the three available and I want the third to be computed, but it varies which. I have found it fairly difficult to implement this kind of data entry in Google Spreadsheets and Excel, even know conceptually it's a very simple constraint "a*b=c" where I know some two variables.

As a more substantive comment: You may find the thesis "Propagation networks : a flexible and expressive substrate for computation" by Alexey Radul interesting. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/54635

[fainpul]

You could create a table with 3 columns: distance, time, pace. Set the display format for time and pace to "Duration".

Enter these formulas:

  distance = time / pace
  time = distance * pace
  pace = time / distance

Drag fill everything down. At this point you get reference errors, but once you enter any two values (thereby overwriting the formulas in those cells), you get your result.

[culi]

You just need two spreadsheet tabs. One for the "raw" input and one with a formula that either takes the input if it exists or falls back to the calculated version

[davexunit]

Came here to see if anyone mentioned propagators. That thesis is excellent. I second the recommendation.