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Introducing Ms. Formula
An oversized calculator
Although it would be a bit
overkill, you can actually use Calc as a normal calculator.
And since that can even help us to understand how to use
formulas, let’s do just that!
We’ll start off with a really tough one; how
much is two plus two?
Go to any cell and type =2+2 and hit
[Enter].
The cell should now read 4, which should
be pretty close to the solution ;-)
This exercise is actually more useful than one might think,
because it shows us that:
- formulas are entered into cells
- formulas begin with "="
- formulas are used to return something different than what
we put in
As we see from this example, we can add numbers quite
easily, but quite differently from, say, a calculator. The
nice thing here is that we can always review what actually
gave the result, as opposed to most ordinary calculators.
There is NO bonus prize for guessing that we can also
subtract, multiply and divide in the same manner...
Please remember what they tried to teach us at school,
because the same rules apply in Calc; multiplication and
division are done before adding and subtraction! Which
means that
=2+3*4 results in 14, not 20...
If you want Calc to understand that you actually want to
add 2 and 3 before you multiply by 4, you have to do so by
using parenthesis, like this:
Now we have forced Calc to add 2 and 3 before multiplying
by 4, which give us 20 as the outcome. Try for yourself if
you don’t believe me!
I have never experienced that a
spreadsheet calculates incorrectly (no matter how much
I’d sometimes like to blame it instead of
me...), and messing up the parenthesis are one of
the easiest mistakes to make at first.