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When writing Excel formulae it's very easy to forget that computers don't work from left to right like our brains and calculate your formulae in the order you type them in:
We tend to assume a formula is calculated from left to right in the order we type it in
Unfortunately computers do not calculate from left to right. They follow the mathematical order of operations called BODMAS/BIDMAS (or PEMDAS for those in the USA or BEDMAS for those in Canada and New Zealand):
All computers/Excel follow the above rules for working out the order in which to calculate a formula
Therefore following these rules, our formula above gets calculated by Excel like this:
Excel will perform multiplication before addition which gives a different answer to the one our brains might be expecting!
To ensure that Excel performs calculations in the order you require, you need to use brackets (parentheses) around parts of your calculation because this comes first in the BODMAS order:
Anything inside brackets gets calculated by Excel first
Note that Division/Multiplication and Addition/Subtraction are equally weighted. When you have both, you can multiply or divide in any order. The best advice here is to simply complete the operation that comes first from left to right. The same rule applies to addition and subtraction.
You can learn more about this topic on the following Wise Owl courses:
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