Excel® 2010 Workbook for Dummies®

Chapter 10. Using Math Functions

In This Chapter

• Rounding off numbers in a spreadsheet

• Using functions for calculating products, powers, and square roots

• Summing the products in cell ranges or arrays

• Doing conditional summing

The Math & Trig group of functions includes a wide variety of mathematical functions for computing new values as well as for controlling the results of calculations. This group also includes a large assortment of trigonometric functions most often needed in engineering and scientific endeavors. In this chapter, you get a chance to practice using some of the math functions more commonly needed in spreadsheets for business applications.

Rounding Off Values

Rounding off numbers that have fractions is one of the more frequent tasks you may undertake in Excel. Excel includes three functions in the Math & Trig category that you can use for rounding off the numbers in a worksheet:

• ROUND(number,num_digits) to round the value specified by the number argument to the number of digits specified by the num_digits argument

• ROUNDUP(number,num_digits) to round up the value away from 0 (zero) that is specified by the number argument to the number of digits specified by the num_digits argument

• ROUNDDOWN(number,num_digits) to round down the value toward 0 (zero) that is specified by the number argument to the number of digits specified by the num_digits argument

Note

Q:	What's the difference between using one of Excel's rounding functions to round off values to a particular decimal place ...