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Unclear about math funtions in Calc

Asked by John

I wanted to make sure I understood the functions (specifically AVERAGE) in the Calc program - it seems that the program has a limit of 30 entries (or so it looks like from the insertion screen) I have a column of nearly 2000 numbers that I want to have an average of, (and other statistic functions) and I am not sure it I enter an AVERAGE function at the bottom of the column, I get an average of the 2000 figures.

If I take the total and divide by the # of entries, the figure displayed doesn't seem to agree with the AVERAGE function - could someone explain this to me?

TIA!!

John

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marcus aurelius (adbiz) said : 		#1

you can easily check the accuracy of the average function by summing the 2000 number then dividing by 2000. i doubt they'd limit the number of entries to 30.

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marcus aurelius (adbiz) said : 		#2

if you need assurance, you should post your question on the openoffice.org forum. their site allows uploading of documents for others to check out. sadly this site doesn't.

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marcus aurelius (adbiz) said : 		#3

okay. i had a look in the help and this is what is there

AVERAGE
Returns the average of the arguments.
Syntax
AVERAGE(Number1; Number2; ...Number30)
Number1; Number2;...Number 0 are numerical values or ranges.
Example
=AVERAGE(A1:A50)

from what i can interpret, you can enter up to 30 cells in the formula. this is debatable as i'm not going to spend time entering 30 cells. HOWEVER, as in the example, by using a range, you can enter as many cells as you like. NOTE that A1:A50 is a range from cell A1 to cell A50, so you can enter more than 50 numbers.

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John (jef-islandnet) said : 		#4

Marcus - that is exactly what I was asking - the # of entries seems to be unclear, and I will check out the openoffice forum, the help screen in OO directed me to this site, so I thought I'd ask here first! :-) it is weird, but I will find out one way or another!

Thx

John

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