Excel 2000 in a Nutshell

Name

RANK

Synopsis

Use RANK to find the rank of a specific number within a list of numbers. The rank of the number is an integer that indicates how the size of the number compares to other numbers in the list.

Note

Keep in mind that duplicate numbers are assigned the same rank, but the rank of the numbers that follow may not have the anticipated results. For example, if you have the number 1,3,4,3,5 and want to find the rank for the number 3, the number would have the rank of 2, but since there are two of them the number 4 would have the rank of 4.

To Calculate

=RANK(Number, Ref, Order)

The Order argument is optional for this function. The Number and Ref arguments are required.

Number

Indicates the number whose rank you want to find.

Ref

Identifies a list of values. Any nonnumeric values are ignored by the function.

Order

Indicates a numeric value that specifies the order in which the list of values specified by the Ref argument should be sorted. If the Order argument is omitted or it has a value of 0, the list is sorted in descending order. If the argument has any other numeric value, the list is sorted in ascending order.

Example

Figure 15-39 illustrates how to use RANK to determine the numeric rank for the value 45 in the list. Since we specified a value of 0 for the Order argument the rank is based upon the list being sorted in descending order.