Remember that negative times negative is positive and a negative times a positive is negative. Then answer is -3 because the computer calculated = (-1) ^ 3 = -1 * -1 * -1 = -1. Let’s say your boss decides you’re doing a great job and he or she is going to give you a 10% raise! How would you calculate your new salary?įirst, remember that multiplication comes before addition. So the computer first calculates radius ^ 2 and then it multiples that result by Pi. Looking at the table above we see that exponents comes before multiplication. The area of a circle is =PI() * radius ^ 2. Example: Calculating the area of a circle For the moment, we will just stick with what we just covered. There are other precedence rules related to strings and reference operators. How can two operators have the same precedence? It just means that if a formula has two more operators with the same precedence, then the calculation is done left to right. This is the same as multiplying a number by -1. This means that Excel will do this calculation first. When parentheses are used, they override the normal rules of precedence. The precedence of math operators is shown below, in descending order.
Excel symbols for formulas how to#
Now let’s demonstrate how to use a function. When the alphabet runs outs, Excel places another letter in front: AA, AB, AC… AZ, BA, BC, BC, etc. The first cell in the spreadsheet is A1 meaning column A, row 1. To remember which is which, think of a column holding up a roof – columns go up-down and thus rows go left-right.Ĭolumns are labeled by letters rows by numbers. Rows run horizontally and columns run vertically. To understand how to write formulas and functions, you need to know about rows and columns.