Excel basic math - How to perform basic math in Excel 2010, Excel 2013, Excel 2016

okay next we're going to do some basic math within your Excel spreadsheet now uh we're probably going to have other videos about formulas and in fact I'm sure that we will but this is a basic math so if you look at this chart here it's it's going to show you uh the type of math that you want to do the symbol that you're going to use now uh this column talks about the order the actual order that it performs the uh the operations in this is called the order of operator uh operations I'll talk about that in a second here here's an example of each uh type of meth and then we have the result over here uh now if you look over here where my mouse is it says all formulas start with an equal sign so when you start a mathematical formula you're going to start with an equal sign and then it says the mathematical operators are completed in the mathematical order of operations not in the left to right order I want to explain what that means in just a second uh let's do a really basic one I'm going to click over here and let's say I want to add two numbers together I'm going to say equals 7 + 8 so notice how I typed in the equal sign and then 7 + 8 I'm going to hit the enter K and that gives us the result of 15 uh let's do a subtraction then uh the the subtraction of course is the minus sign so I want to say equal 14 - 6 and then uh of course we'll get the result of eight uh let's do a basic multiplication multiplication is going to use the asterisk so I going to say equals 3 * 4 and then you can see what happened it multiplied those together of course uh let's do a basic division the symbol for division is the uh Slash so I'm going to say equals 4 ided by two and notice how all the formulas do start with an equal sign that's pretty much a universal for Excel so uh sometimes I'm looking at people and using Excel and they actually break out their calculator and I'm like no no you can do the math right here as we can see uh but these are the basic examples now let's try a percent if we uh I'm going to say equals 100 times 10% now I could have also said times .1 and of course that's the same thing as 10% so for your percents you can either type in the decimal or you can type in the percent either way would work in this case it's going to return the value of 10 now let's go over to this one this is called exponents so that this means you know 2 to the 5ifth power or in the example over here 3 to the 4th power so that means we're going to take 3 * 3 * 3 * 3 or 2 the 3 power would be 2 * 2 * 2 uh so what you're going to use is this little symbol over here it's called a carrot and and where you find that is uh the shift six on your keyboard so look at the top row of your keyboard where the numbers are and imagine you're hitting the shift with the six button that gives you that up Arrow that's called a carrot so if I want to go two if if I want to go 3 to the 4th power I'm going to say equals 3 up Arrow 4 and I'm going to hit the enter key so if you notice in this comment that actually means 3 * 3 * 3 * 3 that's what 3 the 4th power means and you can see that gave us 81 and then look at the formula equals 3 up Arrow 4 now let's talk about when you're going to use the parentheses this is where the mathematical order of operations comes in so I'm going to type in a formula your formula can have more than one uh calculation so I'm going to say equals 3 * 2 + 4 so what's going to happen is it's going to do the um the multiplication first and then it's going to do the addition so in that case it gave us the number 10 well what if we wanted the addition to happen first well this is where the mathematical order of operations can come in and the mathematical order of operations is going to do anything in parenthesis first then exponents then multiplication then division then addition and then subtraction uh so this is this is uh maybe something that you might have learned in albate Class A long time ago um but there's actually a neonic that is used to remember this it's going to be P for parentheses e for exponents M for multiplication D for division a for addition and S for subtraction the pneumonic is please excuse my dear Aunt Sally this is the way I was taught this way back in uh high school and it must have still work because I still remember it so what does that really mean well you see if I want the uh addition to happen first here then I'm going to come up to the formula and type in an open parenthesis before the two and then a Clos parentheses after the four so according to the order of operations now it's going to do anything in parentheses first so in this case it'll do the addition first I'm going to hit the enter key and now you can see instead of 10 now it says 18 so um if you want to give something a PRI priority into the formula so that it occurs first mathematically then you're going to put that in parentheses like the sample over here so that's how you can start to do basic math now your formulas can be very very long and very complicated they can have lots of numbers and lots of mathematical operators so if you work for the accounting department or the finance department or the engineering department your formulas might be rather complex so a lot of times you will use the the parentheses to give things priority so those so that those occur uh first in in the formula so really these are the basics to doing your basic math uh all formulas start with an equal sign the mathematical operators are completed in the mathematical order of operations uh not necessarily in the left or right order that they appear in the formula parentheses uh the exponent is going to be the Carro that's a 3 to the 4th power this is multiplication division addition subtraction and then your percents