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Lesson 3: Basic Formulas

About 30 minutes — Activity-based lesson

What You Will Learn

This lesson covers:

What a formula is: an instruction that calculates automatically

This section covers the key ideas about what a formula is: an instruction that calculates automatically. Discuss with your group or family and explore the concepts together.

SUM: add up a range of numbers

This section covers the key ideas about sum: add up a range of numbers. Discuss with your group or family and explore the concepts together.

AVERAGE: find the mean

This section covers the key ideas about average: find the mean. Discuss with your group or family and explore the concepts together.

COUNT, MAX, MIN: how many, highest, lowest

This section covers the key ideas about count, max, min: how many, highest, lowest. Discuss with your group or family and explore the concepts together.

Check Your Understanding

1. What is a formula?

Answer: An instruction starting with = that tells the spreadsheet to calculate something. =SUM(A1:A10) adds up all values from A1 to A10.

2. How do you write a SUM formula?

Answer: Type =SUM(A1:A10) to add all values in cells A1 through A10. The colon means 'through.' Press Enter and the total appears.

3. What does =AVERAGE(B2:B20) do?

Answer: It calculates the mean of all values from B2 to B20. The spreadsheet adds them up and divides by how many there are — automatically.

4. What do MAX and MIN do?

Answer: =MAX(A1:A10) finds the largest value. =MIN(A1:A10) finds the smallest. These are instant ways to find extremes in your data.

Key Takeaways

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