Microsoft Excel 2013 Tutorial - 17 - PEMDAS and Naming Ranges Video Lecture | Microsoft Excel 2013: Be the Excel Master - Software Development

all right welcome back Cracker Jacks and
in this video of course we're going to
be talking about the order of operations
I don't even know why I say that the
title is at the top of every video you
can clearly you know you already know
what we're going to be talking about but
you know it's a habit hard to break
whatever so let's go ahead and get
started and for this example I actually
opened up its 19 Buckey store so if you
want to follow along go ahead so the
first thing is this go ahead and make a
new equation in any empty cell we won't
worry about the data right now since
this is just a quick demonstration and
type in this formula 5 plus 10
multiplied and of course that's extract
3 now hit enter and check it out it
gives you 35 all right why is that
because I thought that 5 plus 10 was 15
and multiplied by 3
okay that's 45 15 times 3 that is 45
isn't it yep so let's hit enter again 35
what the heck is going on well the
reason that it's giving you a different
answer than you may expect is because
the order of operations
now just like in math class or I don't
know maybe you forgot about it if you're
watching this you know way after high
school or anything the order of
operations states that in every single
equation this is the order first you do
whatever is in parentheses and then you
do exponents then multiplication and
division and then addition and
subtraction so basically in every
equation or at least in this example
multiplication takes place first before
addition so what it's doing is not 5
plus 10 times 3 what's going on is
actually it's taking 10 times 3 which is
30 and then adding 5 to it in that way
that's why whenever we hit enter we get
35 so a lot of people arm the it kinda
confused whenever they're programming
computers and they really get results
other than expected so if you ever arm
are doing that just
p.m. das order of operations so what if
we actually wanted to add five in ten
first and then multiply the result by
three well what we can do is of course
surround five plus ten in parentheses
and parentheses take precedent over
everything in Excel so now what you're
doing is you're forcing Excel to form
this between the parentheses first which
is 15 and then multiplying the resolve
that by three there we go
45 now sometimes even though you may
want something like this and you
actually want the result to be 35
sometimes you're going to see me using
these parentheses anyways and that just
for readability so even though we would
do this by default to me this is
actually a lot more readable since I'm
used to seeing things in parentheses
happen first so again it's not going to
hurt anything if you overuse parentheses
but there you go so I'm going to shut up
about order of operations now because
that took longer than expected and now I
want to move on to naming arrange and I
actually probably should have taught you
guys this a while ago but this is
another cool tip that's going to help
you a lot see whenever you select range
you see that okay this is going to be
kind of hard to work with if we ever
want to reference this section again I
mean what we can do is it's probably
easier to see if you set equal to an
equal sign look what happens of course
whenever you reference a cell we just
type in the cell address now whenever we
reference a range or a bunch of cells
what it does is it takes the address of
the first one in the address of the last
one and it references it by kind of
forming a rectangle now this will work
fine and if we ever want to use all
these numbers and a formula okay we can
use this no problem however whenever
you're just looking at it as human
beings it's really difficult to say
okay b3 to be 15 I have to go back and
look and what was this oh it was the
quantity of all my items again okay so
another cool tip I want to show you guys
is this you can actually give a name to
a range of cells so select all of that
data again and if you go up here this is
the little naming box so Y can type is
actually okay what do I want to name
this range quantity okay so now whenever
I'm using this all of these cells in an
equation
check out whenever I select these it
gives me the name quantity so it's
pretty much giving a range of cells a
nickname and you can use that nickname
in any of your formulas actually show
you one case where you can use it so say
that you wanted to average all of these
numbers so of course actually actually
show you guys the ugly way to do it
first so say that we wanted to average
this column and this column so what we
can do is we can set an equal sign and
there actually a lot of built-in
functions and I'll talk more about these
later but for now I just want to
demonstrate something go start typing in
average and as you can see just like
Google it autocompletes
so go down to average and hit tab and
this is going to say okay this is
actually a built-in um function to
average a range of numbers so inside
these parentheses and I type the
parentheses before but inside these
parentheses select the range of numbers
that you want to average so says okay
you want to average all the numbers from
C 3 to see 15 that's your range okay we
hit enter and check it out it does it
works perfectly however then we give
this to a friend and he says okay he
looking at these formulas average C 3 to
see 15 what the heck is in these I have
to go look at them okay looks like he's
trying to average the price right here
so okay it's going to cause a bunch of
confusion and if you ever go back
to actually check your work I don't know
it's just like a pain in the butt so for
this check out how easier this is start
typing an average hit tab select the
range and hit enter so now this is your
formula just reading it and actually
just teaching it if I say average
quantity it's a lot easier to explain
than average c-32 c15 range of numbers
so that is the benefit of giving a
nickname or naming a range of cells now
another thing I want to mention real
quick since we have a couple minutes is
you're not only limited to giving a
nickname to a range of cells but you can
also give a nickname to one cell so if
you click this instead of suite c3 you
can actually name it like on a gloves
price and hit enter so now instead of
the address c3 you can use gloves price
at any time and it's going to work in
any equation so I'll just demonstrate
that real quick go ahead and pick an
empty cell and as you see whenever I
click it says gloves price plus I don't
know like ten dollars or something and
there we go
so again anytime you want to make your
formulas more readable remember that you
can name ranges of cells and also
individual cells and this little tip is
going to help you out a lot trust me so
for now thank you guys for watching
don't forget subscribe and I'll see you
guys in the next tutorial