Basic Math

Quick reference

• 00:04 The next thing that's important to learn about Excel is how to use it as
• 00:09 a calculator.
• 00:10 And if there's one thing that it just absolutely makes me cry,
• 00:14 it's when I see someone reach for a calculator on the side of their desk,
• 00:20 multiply two numbers together, and then drop it into Excel.
• 00:24 That's just so sad, because Excel is the world's greatest calculator, and
• 00:28 it's actually not that hard to actually use it.
• 00:30 So let's take a little look here at how we actually write basic
• 00:34 mathematical formulas in order to make things a little bit more dynamic.
• 00:39 So the way that it starts is this, if we're going to write a little formula,
• 00:42 do some basic math, we're going to start with the equals character.
• 00:45 And what you might do, in this case here, we've got our quantity of soccer balls and
• 00:49 we've got a cost of them.
• 00:51 You might do something like this, where you say 56*8.99.
• 00:56 Now, that times is the asterisk, it's not an x.
• 00:59 But by starting with equals and putting in two numbers and
• 01:03 using the asterisk, when we hit Enter, we're going to get $503.44.
• 01:09 Now, that's great until someone comes along and says, actually,
• 01:13 we had 57 soccer balls.
• 01:15 And that doesn't work for us anymore, because this value has not been updated,
• 01:19 it's been hardcoded.
• 01:20 So I'm just going to press the Delete key and make this go away, and
• 01:24 I'm going to show how this should work properly.
• 01:27 We're going to say =, and what we're going to do is we're going to go and
• 01:30 click on the cell, and you'll notice it says the cell reference B9.
• 01:34 We're then going to say, multiply it using the asterisk, and
• 01:39 then we'll click on the cost, 8.99.
• 01:42 At this point, we're going to hit Enter.
• 01:44 And what you'll see is that we get 512.43.
• 01:48 Why is this so awesome?
• 01:50 Well, because now, if we go back and
• 01:53 say there really was 56 soccer balls, and we hit Enter,
• 01:57 our value has now updated to 503.44, which is 56 times 8.99.
• 02:04 This is very, very cool.
• 02:06 So let's do this again.
• 02:07 We're going to go = 84*7.97 and
• 02:11 hit Enter, 669.48, fantastic.
• 02:16 We can also do it without using the mouse, = arrow to the left
• 02:22 twice times arrow to the left once, and hit Enter, okay?
• 02:27 In addition, of course, you could also copy and
• 02:31 select a couple of cells and Ctrl+V to paste it.
• 02:34 So we actually get the same formula.
• 02:36 Now, these are using formulas to basically go and multiply these two items together.
• 02:42 Now, once we have those, we might want to go in and say,
• 02:45 get the total count of balls that we have as well.
• 02:49 And there's a really cool little functionality for that, and
• 02:52 it works like this.
• 02:53 If we select the cell immediately below our run of numbers here,
• 02:57 we can come up to the AutoSum button up here.
• 03:00 And if we just click that, it says, well, the formula you need for
• 03:04 that is =SUM(B9-B13).
• 03:06 Okay, so we'll just hit Enter.
• 03:08 So I don't even need to learn the syntax for it, it just works.
• 03:10 And if you go and add all these together using a calculator,
• 03:14 you'll find that it comes to 278.
• 03:16 Again, the beauty of this, it's dynamic.
• 03:19 So if this goes to 57, we're now at 279.
• 03:22 Both the extension and the total have just updated to reflect this new value.
• 03:27 Let me press Ctrl+Z, we're going to go back one more time.
• 03:30 Now, I'm going to do the same thing over here again with the AutoSum function.
• 03:35 So there we go.
• 03:35 We're going to go and say AutoSum.
• 03:36 But before I do that,
• 03:38 I want you to notice that there's the ability to get to other things.
• 03:41 We can do an average, it wouldn't make sense in this case, a count of numbers,
• 03:46 max, min, or even more functions.
• 03:48 By default, when you just hit the AutoSum button, it chooses Sum, but
• 03:52 it is absolutely accurate to do the exact same thing using two clicks.
• 03:55 And when I go on and say Enter now, you'll notice that we have 1924.08,
• 04:01 which is the sum of the values above.
• 04:04 The only thing I'm not really crazy about with this one is I don't like seeing
• 04:08 numbers that have no commas in them.
• 04:10 So I'm going to select this entire thing, and
• 04:12 just format it with a comma style to make sure that I get my thousands separated.
• 04:17 You now know how to use the AutoSum function or know how to write a very basic
• 04:21 mathematical formula, but what if you don't want to multiply things?
• 04:25 What other options do you have?
• 04:26 So let me just show you, I've got a nice little table that I have hidden here.
• 04:30 I'll just open it up.
• 04:31 These are the mathematical symbols that you can use in Excel.
• 04:35 So addition is just the plus character, which probably makes sense, and
• 04:38 subtraction, the negative.
• 04:39 Multiplication is the asterisk, which is generally Shift+8 on your keyboard,
• 04:44 and division is the slash, which is normally down beside your Shift key.
• 04:49 On the bottom right of your keyboard is where you'll find your division.
• 04:52 So basically, what we would enter is we would say something like = 8/10,
• 04:57 and that would actually give us 8 divided by 10.
• 05:00 In order to get your exponents or raise things to powers, so if we wanted 2, and
• 05:04 this is going to be Shift+6 generally to the third power.
• 05:08 At that point, that's going to go and give us 8,
• 05:10 because it's 2 times 2 times 2, okay?
• 05:12 So these are your mathematical symbols that you will use in formulas.
• 05:16 Just remember to start every one of these with the equals character in order to
• 05:20 actually make it a formula that will dynamically recalculate.

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