WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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You may already have some experience creating
simple formulas that have only one type of

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operation...

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But sometimes you have to create more complex
formulas that do have more than one operator;

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for example addition and multiplication.

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To do this, you'll need to understand how
Excel is calculating the answer.

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Excel uses a set of rules called the Order
of Operations, which you might remember from

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math class.

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The Order of Operations determines which parts
of the formula to calculate first.

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The very first thing that you calculate are
the items in parentheses.

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Then, if you have any exponents, you'll calculate
those.

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Next is multiplication and division.

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And finally, addition and subtraction.

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Excel knows to use the Order of Operations
whenever it calculates a complex formula.

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It's important that you remember it, so you
can create formulas that'll give you the correct

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answer.

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To remember the order, you can just use the
acronym "PEMDAS."

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Or, to make it even easier, remember the phrase,
"Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally."

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Let's go over each of these in a little more
detail.

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In this formula, 5+2 is in parentheses.

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So we'll calculate that first to get 7...
and then we can just multiply 3 times 7 to

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get 21.

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This formula contains an exponent—3 to the
power of 2.

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We'll need to calculate that first... and
then we can do the addition.

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If you have multiplication or division, that'll
come next.

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Here, we multiply 2 times 4 to get 8... and
9 minus 8 equals 1.

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Now multiplication and division are considered
to be on the same level.

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That means if you have both of them in your
formula, they're calculated from left to right.

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In this example, we'll do the division first...
and then the multiplication.

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If we wanted the multiplication to happen
first, we could just put it in parentheses,

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or we could rearrange the formula so the multiplication
was on the left.

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Finally, we have addition and subtraction.

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Just like multiplication and division, these
are on the same level, so we'll calculate

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them from left to right.

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OK, now let's put them all together.

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This formula may look really complicated,
but we're just going to go step-by-step through

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the Order of Operations, and you'll see that
it's really not that bad.

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We'll start with the parentheses.

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We'll calculate each of these to get 2 and
3... and as you can see, the formula's already

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starting to look a bit simpler.

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Next, we'll look to see if there are any exponents
in this formula.

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There is one—2 to the second power.

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When we calculate it, it becomes 4.

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Next, we'll do the multiplication and division,
going from left to right.

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And now all that's left is addition—and
that gives us our answer, which is 8.75.

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And that's the same answer Excel would give
you, if you entered that formula in your worksheet.

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Now I'm going to show you why it's so important
that you follow the Order of Operations every

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time.

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If you don't, your formulas won't give you
the correct answer.

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In this example, I'd like to add these three
values, and find out how much the sales tax

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will be.

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I'll start by typing the equal sign, which
is how you always start a formula.

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Then I'll calculate D3... plus D4... plus
D5.

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Next I'll multiply by .075, which is the tax
rate at 7.5%.

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Now, this may look like it's going to give
us the correct answer, but it's not.

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That's because we didn't follow the Order
of Operations.

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Remember, multiplication comes before addition—so
Excel is going to multiply D5 by .075 first...

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then it'll add D3 and D4, which isn't what
we want.

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We want these three values to be added first.

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So to do that, we just need to put them in
parentheses.

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Parentheses are often the best way of controlling
which parts of the formula are calculated

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first.

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And when this formula is calculated... we
can see that the answer is $20.56.

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So whenever you're doing a complex formula,
just remember to follow the Order of Operations.

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Then you'll get the correct answer, every
time.