It should be noted that the well-known Excel program has enormous functionality, even a small part of which is often left behind the scenes. This is especially true of daily office work, many of which can be automated. Among professional users, features in Excel are extremely popular, with which you can even create your own formulas. However, what is it all about?
The fact is that functions in this application are called simple text commands that are interpreted by a computer, allowing even very complex mathematical calculations to be performed. To make it clearer, we give a clear example. What do you think the functions in Excel mean: “= AVERAGE (A1: A5)”? If you decipher the abbreviation at the beginning, then translated into Russian it will be "the average value from the range of cells from A1 to A5 inclusive." The sign “:” here is not a division, but a range.
I must say that it does not make sense to manually enter cell numbers, since when you select them with the left mouse button, the program itself substitutes them in the input line of formulas. The possibility of such calculations makes functions in Excel a powerful tool that allows you to perform complex mathematical operations by linking tables into a single interactive system.
How to enter them?
Like functions, formulas should start with the “=” sign in the input line. Then follows the abbreviation denoting the expression, after which the brackets are placed (as in the example above). Arguments are placed inside, which are a graphical display of the values that are used in the calculations. As such, functions in Excel can use not only individual cells, but also a single value, as well as entire series of cell references. So, the expression "= SUM (12; 24)" will give you the result "36", while the similar system "= SUM (A12: A24)" will give the sum of those numbers that are in the specified range.
Nested Functions
As we already said, this tool is so powerful that it allows you to solve even extremely complex equations. To do this, Excel (the meaning of the functions of which can be very different) uses other expressions in complex systems. To make it clearer, we give a practical example: "= SUM (A5: A10; AVERAGE (B7: C10))." Note that sevenfold nesting is supported. Of course, you can enter more arguments, but such an expression will no longer be considered.
However, Microsoft specialists are constantly working to improve their products, so there is a chance that soon the program will understand more complex expressions.
"Master"
For beginners, a “Feature Wizard” is provided, which greatly facilitates their creation. There are two ways to use it:
- find the “Insert” tab and select the “Function” sub-item in it;
- You can reduce the time by finding the "Insert function" button on the toolbar .
As we have already said, students can also use the spreadsheet editor from Microsoft, since it makes it possible to calculate more “vital” examples. So, the function graph in Excel will allow you to get a convenient and intuitive graphical solution to problems of the form “y = f (x), segment [a, b]. Step h = 0.1 ". This will greatly facilitate the learning process.