Spreadsheet Practice

Lesson 2 of 29, Foundations

SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX & COUNT

Five functions answer most questions about a list of numbers.

Free7 minutes, 3 exercisesSUMAVERAGEMINMAXCOUNTCOUNTA

Watch it done

3 steps

Watch the technique worked out on sample data, then try it yourself in the exercises.

How it works

A function is a named calculation that takes arguments in parentheses. A range like B2:B8 means every cell from B2 to B8, so =SUM(B2:B8) adds the whole week.

These functions skip text and empty cells. That is usually what you want, but it changes the math: AVERAGE divides by how many numbers it found, not by the number of rows. COUNT counts numbers only; COUNTA counts anything that isn't empty.

Syntax

=SUM(B2:B8)Add a range
=AVERAGE(B2:B8)Mean of the numbers
=MAX(B2:B8)Largest value
=MIN(B2:B8)Smallest value
=COUNT(B2:B8)How many numbers
=COUNTA(A2:A8)How many non-empty cells

Watch out for

  • AVERAGE ignores the "Closed" day, so it averages 6 days, not 7.
  • In desktop Excel, Alt+= (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+T (Mac) inserts SUM for you.

The exercises

  1. Weekly total. In E2, add up the week's sales in B2:B8.
  2. Average, best and worst. Fill in E3 (average daily sales), E4 (best day) and E5 (worst day), each from B2:B8.
  3. Counting cells. In E6, count the days with a sales number. In E7, count how many days are listed in column A.

Weekly total

In E2, add up the week's sales in B2:B8.