you may already have some experience
creating simple formulas that have only
one type of operation but sometimes you
have to create more complex formulas
that do have more than one Operator for
example addition and multiplication to
do this you'll need to understand how
Google sheets is calculating the answer
Google sheets uses a set of rules called
the order of operations which you might
remember from math class the order of
operations determines which parts of the
formula to calculate first the very
first thing that you calculate are the
items in parentheses then if you have
any exponents you'll calculate those
next is multiplication and division and
finally addition and subtraction your
spreadsheet knows how to use the order
of operations whenever it calculates a
complex formula it's important that you
remember it so you can create formulas
that'll give you the correct answer to
remember the order you can just use the
acronym PEMDAS or to make it even easier
remember the phrase please excuse my
dear Aunt Sally let's go over each of
these in a little more detail
in this formula five plus two is in
parentheses so we'll calculate that
first to get seven and then we can just
multiply three times seven to get 21
this formula contains an exponent 3 ^ 2
we'll need to calculate that first
before doing the addition
if you have multiplication or division
that'll come next here we multiply 2
times 4 to get 8 and 9 minus 8 equals 1
now multiplication and division are
considered to be at the same level that
means if you have both of them in your
formula they're calculated from left to
right in this example we'll do the
division first and then the
multiplication
if we wanted the multiplication to
happen first we could just put it in
parentheses or we could rearrange the
formula so the multiplication was on the
left
finally we have addition and subtraction
just like multiplication and division
these are on the same level so we'll
calculate them from left to right
now let's put them all together this
formula may look really complicated but
we're just going to go step by step
through the order of operations and
you'll see that it's really not that bad
we'll start with the parentheses we'll
calculate each of these to get two and
three and as you can see the formula is
already starting to look a bit simpler
next we'll look to see if there are any
exponents in this formula and there is
one two to the second power when we
calculate it it becomes four next we'll
do the multiplication and division going
from left to right
and now all that's left is addition and
that gives us our answer which is eight
point seven five and that's the same
answer Google sheets would give you if
you entered the formula in your
spreadsheet
it's important to keep these rules in
mind whenever you're creating a formula
in this example I'd like to add these
three values and find out how much the
sales tax will be I'll start by typing
the equal sign which is how you always
start a formula then I'll calculate D 3
+ d 4 + D 5 next I'll multiply by point
zero five five which is the tax rate at
five point five percent now is this
formula going to give us the correct
answer no it's not multiplication comes
before addition in the order of
operations so the spreadsheet is going
to multiply D five by point zero five
five first then it'll add D 3 and d 4
which isn't what we want we want these
three values to be added first so to do
that we just need to put them in
parentheses
parentheses are often the best way of
controlling which parts of the formula
are calculated first and when this
formula is calculated we can see that
the answer is $15.08 so whenever you're
doing a complex formula just remember to
follow the order of operations then
you'll get the correct answer every time
GCF global creating opportunities for a
better life