Filling out a ballot with Numbers for iOS

Note: these instructions are for Numbers on a mobile platform (iPhone, iPad).
For instructions for the Mac desktop/laptop version, go here.

It’s highly suggested that you use a laptop or desktop to do the poll, as it makes things much easier. Using a tablet is preferable to a phone, especially if you have a long list of coasters you’ve ridden.

Download the ballot, then open it in Numbers.

You’ll be presented with a big list of coasters in spreadsheet format:

If the top row of data (Rank, Ridden?, etc) isn’t greyed out, then you need to make that row a ‘header row’. Here’s how:

Tap any cell in the spreadsheet, then tap the paintbrush icon. Tap HEADERS & FOOTER then tap the + next to Header Rows so that it shows ‘1’ and then turn on Freeze Rows, like this:

This will keep that row from moving all over the place later when you start sorting your ballot.

There are eight columns. The “Local Name” column contains the non-English name that a coaster is known as in its home country, which makes it easier to identify for the voters in those countries. The ID column is used by the tabulation program. You can tap the ID number in a row to take you to the RCDB page for that coaster, but DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING in that column.

That’s a LOT of coasters to deal with!

Step 1. Delete stuff you haven’t ridden

It’s likely that there are quite a few that you haven’t ridden and maybe even entire countries you haven’t visited. Let’s get rid of those first. The ballot is initially sorted by Country, then Park.

Pinch-down the table until you can see all of the columns on your screen at once.

Find the first country you haven’t been to, let’s say Australia. Highlight all of Australia’s data by tapping once on the first Australia line number…

then dragging the lower dot to the last Australia line.

Australia’s data will be highlighted like this:

Now tap DELETE. Do this for every country you haven’t been to.

It’s probable that you’ve not been to every park in the countries you’ve visited. The ballot is sorted by country, then park - so now that you’ve deleted the countries you haven’t visited, it’s easy to do the same with parks you haven’t visited. Let’s do that now.

Lastly, it’s also probable that you haven’t been on every coaster at every park you’ve been to. Parks build new rides all the time and there are likely some you’ll need to delete off your ballot. Let’s do that now.

Done it? Great! Your ballot should now ONLY contain those coasters you’ve ridden.

Step 2. Delete “No” from the RIDDEN column

Time to get rid of that list of “No”s in the Ridden column. Tap the “No” at the top of the column and then drag the blue dot to the bottom to highlight the entire column (you can also do this in stages). Then press DELETE. That will erase all the “No”s without deleting the column itself.

Notice: If you’re filling out your wood ballot and you don’t consider RMC wood coasters (such as Wildfire or Outlaw Run) to be “wood coasters” and don’t want to rank them, simply delete them from your ballot at this stage. DO NOT give them a low ranking as a “protest vote” - that’s immature and will negatively skew the rankings. Don’t be that person. The poll should be a measure of how good the ride is, not whether or not you think it should be included on a wood poll. Got it? Good. Moving on.

You can leave that column blank, or you can put “Yes” or “Y” or some other such thing in there, it doesn’t matter. You can even put in the year that you rode it or the number of times that you rode it, if you’d like. As long as it no longer says “No” then that coaster will get counted.

Step 3. Ranking

Now comes the fun part: RANK THOSE COASTERS! Simply tap the cell with the “0” and type the ranking for that coaster.

From time to time, you can re-sort the sheet by rank.

That will put the coasters you’ve ranked in order at the top and the coasters you haven’t ranked yet at the bottom. It’s an easy way to make sure you haven’t missed one. Let’s try it.

Tap that icon next to the paintbrush.