system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 - What are pivot tables actually used for? Like, a real life example.
gpt
Take a set of data like the guests at a wedding and the tables that they’re sitting at.

Let’s say you want to know how many of each dish is going to be served at each table.

You could write a bunch of sum if formulas in a new sheet, or you could just create a pivot table, select table number as the row, select the dish types as the columns, and sum of dish type as value, you have your answer.

Basically anytime you want to aggregate data across another set of data, pivot tables are incredibly fast ways to do that.