The IF() function
The IF() function is getting a section all of its own, because for many people it’s not as
intuitive to understand as the common maths and stats functions.
The IF() function checks for a specific condition. If the condition is met, then one action is
taken; if the condition is not met, then a different action is taken. For example, you may be
reviewing a set of tutorial marks. If a student’saverage mark is below 50, then the cell value
should be FAIL; so the condition you are checking is whether or not the average result is
below 50. If this condition is not met (that is, the average result is 50 or more), then the cell
value should be PASS.
Let’s see this in action:
The structure of an IF() function is:
=IF (condition, result if true, result if false) Using English to describe our example as an IF statement: IF the average mark is less than
50, then display the word “FAIL”, else display the word “PASS”.
Nested functions
Take a deep breath and don’t panic! I just want to show you that if you need to, you can
include one function inside another.
In the example above, we first worked out the Average mark, and then the Pass/Fail outcome.
But we could have done it all in a single step,by using the following formula in row 3:
=IF(AVERAGE(B3:E3) < 50, “FAIL”, “PASS”)
Charts
A picture is worth a thousand words! Often it’s much easier to understand data when it’s
presented graphically, and Excel providesthe perfect tools to do this!
It’s worth starting with a quick outline of different data types and charts:
Categoricaldata items belong to separate conceptual categories such as knives, forks and
spoons; or males and females. They don’t have inherent numerical values, and it doesn’t
make sense to do calculations such as finding an average category. A pie chart or column
chart is most suitable for categorical data
The IF() function is getting a section all of its own, because for many people it’s not as
intuitive to understand as the common maths and stats functions.
The IF() function checks for a specific condition. If the condition is met, then one action is
taken; if the condition is not met, then a different action is taken. For example, you may be
reviewing a set of tutorial marks. If a student’saverage mark is below 50, then the cell value
should be FAIL; so the condition you are checking is whether or not the average result is
below 50. If this condition is not met (that is, the average result is 50 or more), then the cell
value should be PASS.
Let’s see this in action:
The structure of an IF() function is:
=IF (condition, result if true, result if false) Using English to describe our example as an IF statement: IF the average mark is less than
50, then display the word “FAIL”, else display the word “PASS”.
Nested functions
Take a deep breath and don’t panic! I just want to show you that if you need to, you can
include one function inside another.
In the example above, we first worked out the Average mark, and then the Pass/Fail outcome.
But we could have done it all in a single step,by using the following formula in row 3:
=IF(AVERAGE(B3:E3) < 50, “FAIL”, “PASS”)
Charts
A picture is worth a thousand words! Often it’s much easier to understand data when it’s
presented graphically, and Excel providesthe perfect tools to do this!
It’s worth starting with a quick outline of different data types and charts:
Categoricaldata items belong to separate conceptual categories such as knives, forks and
spoons; or males and females. They don’t have inherent numerical values, and it doesn’t
make sense to do calculations such as finding an average category. A pie chart or column
chart is most suitable for categorical data
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