Excel exercises
Excel exercises: Averages and ranks
This group is about choosing which summary a column of numbers deserves.
AVERAGE can be dragged anywhere by one large value, and MEDIAN stays in the middle when it happens. MODE answers a different question: which value appears most often. LARGE and SMALL return the nth value from either end without sorting the list, and RANK turns a value into a position. MIN and MAX give the two ends of the column.
Seven exercises at levels 1 and 2, and the summary asks for the right number rather than the familiar one.
A mean sent to a meeting that needed a median tells the room the wrong thing. The habit worth building is to look at the column before choosing the function, because one order ten times the usual size decides the answer. Each prompt in the group hides a distribution like that. In the median exercise the extra order is 40, against readings between 12 and 19.
A stale exercise is one you finished two weeks ago or longer. One that needs practice took a hint, or more than one try.
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- AVERAGE: mean of a score list Turn five scores into one class average that updates itself.
- MIN and MAX: fastest and slowest Paid Return the smallest or largest number in a range without sorting the sheet first.
- LARGE and SMALL: the nth highest Paid Pick the nth value in an unsorted list instead of sorting it to read one number.
- MEDIAN: the middle value Paid Summarise a list with a middle value that an outlier cannot drag.
- MODE: the most common value Paid Find the value that repeats most often, which is neither the biggest nor the middle.
- Rank a list without sorting it Paid Put a place number on every row of an unsorted list, in either direction.
- Average functions summary Paid Join two summary functions into one answer, reading the nesting inside-out.