Week 5:Clear/Excel Formulas

This week we learned how to use and operate Excel. We went over how to create formulas in an excel worksheet which I found to be extremely interesting and useful. To start a formula in excel you must begin with an equals sign (=). From there you fill out the rest of the equation and the order of performance in the equation is parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, then subtraction (aka PEMDAS).

The symbols for the different mathematical operations are:

• Addition (+)
• Subtration (-)
• Multiplication (*)
• Division (/)

Excel also has numerous functions that will help you with formulas. For example if you type into a cell: =SUM and drag the cursor across the cells you would like it to add together (=SUM(B2:E2), it will sum the cells for you. For an in depth list of math and statistical functions click here. Excel formulas and functions are important in the business world because creating an excel spreadsheet for a company while knowing how to create functions that you can copy into multiple cells can turn out to be time saving and efficient. Excel spreadsheets can look and seem complicated but once you learn how to work with them, they become easy and helpful.