From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Create a basic equation

From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Create a basic equation

“

- [Instructor] One of the advantages of working with spreadsheet programs like Excel is that they can quickly perform both simple and complex calculations once you've set them up to do so. Here I have a basic spreadsheet that I've been working on to figure out which of two jobs will give me the higher annual income. I've entered the data for the hourly wage of both jobs, as well as the number of hours that are available each week. Now I could get out a calculator and figure out what my annual income for both jobs would be, but it's worth entering the proper formulas into Excel, so if the terms of the hourly wage or hours per week change, I just have to plug in the new numbers to update my totals. So to add a formula to a cell, first select the cell. I'll select the annual income cell for job A, and then click the formulas tab. Next, I'm going to click the arrow below the autosome button, which gives me a list of common calculations, but I need a formula other than what's listed here, so I'll choose more functions. That opens up the function window. So to figure out the annual income, I need to multiply my hourly wage by my hours per week, and then multiply that number by the number of weeks I'll be working in a year. Multiplication is a basic math function. So I'll choose the category of math and trig, and then under select the function, I'll find and double click product. Now it's just a matter of building my formula by specifying which cells need to get multiplied together. In this case Excel is actually smart enough to have already guessed that I want to multiply the value in cell B3 by the value in cell B4. Now, if it didn't guess correctly, I would just need to click the cell I want to grab the data from, or I can drag across multiple cells if there are more than one, but in this case it did guess correctly, so I'll drag across B3 and B4 again. All right, so now we need to multiply the product of B3 and B4 by the number of weeks in a year, which is 52. So I add that in number two field. I'll click okay to close out the formula, and just like that the calculation is performed, and I see the annual income for job A. Now a really nice thing about most spreadsheet programs is that if you want to perform the same calculation on another set of numbers, you don't have to build the whole formula from scratch again. I'm just going to select the annual income for job A, and then click copy under the home tab. You can also use Control C. Then I'll select the annual income cell for job B, and click paste. So it's that easy. Notice in the formula builder that Excel was smart enough to swap out B3 and B4 for C3 and C4. Now I can plainly see that job B will earn me more money even though it's fewer hours. And if any of this data changes, maybe job B is reduced to 35 hours per week, I can just type that in, and my total is updated instantly. Lastly, I should probably format the annual income cells as currency. So I'll select them. And here in the numbers section of the home tab, I'll set these to currency. So that's the basics of entering data into an Excel worksheet and performing calculations.

Contents