The battle with FILTER ended surprisingly easily.
Saito lowered his stance and tackled it. I didn’t care about what the FILTER was trying to do and just processed it. The FILTER let go of Saito and sank into the cell.
“Well, that’s how it goes. To deal with it, you just deal with it.”
Saito spoke as if nothing had happened. In comparison, I sat down nervously on the floor.
“I hope that’s the end of them…”
As if to quash my optimism, lightning flashed all around and 10 more FILTER’s appeared. They were lined up in an orderly manner, each one holding a different weapon in their hands. A hook shaped rod, a hexagonal blut weapon, a large shield with giant spinning blades like a chainsaw, a rail gun that seemed like it came from a sci-fi movie, and a flamethrower spewing flames. This was a clearly a more dangerous situation than any previous quest. I gulped.
“A-Are we going to run away?”
Even we workers have our limits.
“Don’t be stupid. Are you going to abandon the user?”
“Even if you say that…”
“Alright, stand back.”
Saito slowly dug into his bag and pulled out a cylindrical object before assembling it.
“Awesome!!!!”
Saito firmly held his gun in front of him. Eh? Gun?
The FILTER’s started running towards Saito all at once.
ZUOON-
One of the FILTER’s fired a ball of light from its railgun. Saito dodged the attack by spinning around as he then prepared himself to strike back.
ZUOOON-
An unexpectedly large vortex of light shot out from Saito’s classic looking gun and hit the FILTER holding the railgun. The FILTER was blown away and stopped moving. One after the other, Saito accurately shot the FILTER’s holding ranged weapons.
“GAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!”
Saito raised his gun as he let out an incomprehensible roar.
Gachi, Gachi, Gachi, Gachi.
The FILTER’s with blunt weapons ran towards us, making the sound metal scraping against the ground. Saito fired his gun wildly, blowing the FILTER’s away one after the other. But, one managed to get through and hit Saito with a club.
Don-!
Before the club could fully swing down, Saito shot it at point blank range. The FILTER was blown away, but the tip of Saito’s gun was crushed by the club.
VROOOOOM-
The last remaining FILTER attacked with a roaring chainsaw raised high. Throwing away his gun, Saito charged in unarmed.
“KISHAAAAAA!!!”
It was faster for Saito to reach for his pocket that it was for the chainsaw to swing down. Saito let out a roar and shoved something into the FILTER’s wide open mouth before running away as far and as fast as he could.
BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!
The FILTER’s upper body was blown apart from the shoulders up. Saito, who was hit by the blast, was also sent flying. It seemed like he had pushed a grenade into the FILTER’s mouth.
After a fierce battle, all that was left were the twitching FILTER’s on the ground as well as scattered fragments, a burning smell, and smoke.
“Hey! Let’s get rid of all this wreckage. Help me.”
Saito shouted while dusting his hands. I ran up to Saito.
“You probably don’t know which function is which, but just process the FILTER’s for now.”
I disposed of the scattered remains of the FILTER’s one by one as I walked around. Saito processed the weapons the FILTER’s had been using, it seemed like each one had been a different function.
Once the processing was completed, the lights went out and the quest was finished.
##################
“The user probably wanted to provide basic statistics with conditions.”
On the way back, Saito answered my questions.
“Takahashi, do you know statistics?”
“Hmm, I took a course in statistics in the economics department at university, but I only managed to score a credit. I only vaguely remember it now. However, I can understand basic statistics. It’s just just about averages. There are ones for calculating the mode, median, and variance as well.”
“That’s enough to know. I believe Inoue explained yesterday that FILTER can also be used for conditional aggregation. That’s exactly how the user used it earlier. SUM and AVERAGE have SUMIFS and AVERAGEIFS, but that is all that is provided. In addition to AVERAGE and SUM, there is also COUNT, MAX, MIN, MODE, MEDIAN, and STDEV.”
I see. Excel had functions to output basic statistics using optional data analysis, but with Google Spreadsheets, it was possible to output that information using conditional functions. When I was an Excel expert before my death, my challenge was how to efficiently aggregate data on various axes such as daily, monthly, and others, in order to respond to client requests. However, Excel had many more statistical functions than just the basics. If I had been able to use Excel better, I might have been able to provide more accurate analysis. I didn’t know what kind of data the quest user was analysing, but they were definitely better at using spreadsheets than I was. The more I thought about it, the more regretful I felt. Apparently sensing my thoughts, Saito admonished me.
“Statistical functions are deep and there are quite a lot of them. Basic statistics are found every now and then, but more advanced tests, distributions, and regressions are rarely seen and, as I’ve told you before, they are left to specialist workers.”
“Do you know much about statistics, Saito-san?”
“Don’t be stupid, I don’t understand anything. We workers are no longer the spreadsheet users. We just need to understand the behaviour of the functions and use our strength to process them.”
After being told something so obvious, I fell silent for a while.
※Functions
COUNT https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093620
MAX https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3094013
MIN https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3094017
MODE https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3094029
MEDIAN https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3094025
VAR https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3094063
STDEV https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3094054