The Concept of a Function

Spreadsheets generally have a large number of integrated functions for processing data. There are hundreds, categorised as follows:

• Arithmetic functions that offer basic tools to process numerical data
• Statistical functions that have analysis tools, averaging tools
• Date functions that process and convert dates
• Logic functions that process logic data (AND, OR, etc.)
• Financial functions that process monetary data

Syntax of a Function

A function is characterised by its name (written in uppercase by convention), followed by parenthesis. It contains arguments (inside the parenthesis), which are a set of values, separated by semi-colons, to which the function applies. Thus, a function called FUNCTION would be written as follows:

FUNCTION(arguments)