What’s inside Excel Everest? Tutorial Contents Part 12

Continuing on with our “What’s inside Excel Everest?”, which showcases the introductory, “why is this important?” paragraphs found within Excel Everest.

…why is it important to learn?…

Basic math formulas

The basic math formulas in Excel allow you to do, well, basic math. The standard Sum, Count, and Average formulas are more or less self-explanatory and always useful.  A few other formulas that are highly practical for all sorts of analyses are Percentile and Percent rank. These allow you to determine where a number lies on the distribution of a set of numbers. For example, if you have a set of interview scores and want to determine the top 90% cutoff score, you’d use these formulas to find the point of cutoff. Lastly, Rand and Randbetween are great for randomly selecting items within your data (ie, If you were running a contest and randomly needed to select a winner).