Many of you might have seen this ‘BODMAS test’ on social media or some of you might not! It has divided people everywhere up into groups as to what their answer was for the last line.

Have you tried it? What do you think the answer is?

Here at JPL we thought this was a great ‘test’. We also liked how it covers a topic in our Basic Excel course which looks at a concept called BODMAS. You may know the concept of BODMAS from your days back at school in the maths classroom.. This concept dictates the order in which calculations are performed in an Excel formula.

Although it might not apply to your work regularly, BODMAS is an important concept to know about in Excel. It is important to remember that Excel is a program and so it carries out calculations based on how it was programmed to do so.

Let us know what you think the answer is to the BODMAS test! If you are unsure and need a bit of help, that is fine! Look back over our hints and tips for a bit of guidance in what BODMAS means if you’re unsure.

We have done a few BODMAS hints and tips over the years as this is sometimes a topic that attendees on our Basic course struggle with, so if you feel like you fall into this category then why not take a look at the hints and tips on it? Or if you are still unsure, then get in touch for details on our Basic Excel course, we’d be happy to help you with your Excel training needs.

As well as Excel hints and tips, we have a wide range of hints and tips on the other Microsoft Office packages, just take a look at our hints and tips page to find more!

If you liked this BODMAS hint and tip, why not take a look at our previous one on tables in Excel?

The post BODMAS test – do you know what the answer is to it? Let us know appeared first on JPL IT Training Ltd.

This week was a first for John on a Basic Excel training session he delivered for 6 people in Hereford. You may know the concept of BODMAS from your days back at school in the maths classroom, which dictates the order in which calculations are performed in an Excel formula. What BODMAS stands for is laid out below:

BO – Brackets Over   ( )

D – Division   /

M – Multiplication   *

A – Addition   +

S – Subtraction   –

Understanding the concept

Even though it might not apply to your work on a daily basis, BODMAS is an important concept to know about in Excel. It is important to remember that Excel is a program and so it carries out calculations based on how it was programmed to do so. This is where BODMAS comes in to place. For example take a look at the calculation below:

A1 = 10  B1 = 5  C1 = 4           =A1+B1*C1

In this example, I am trying to do a calculation to add A1 to B1 and then times it by C1, so in that scenario I would expect the answer to be 60. However if you put that calculation in to Excel, it would produce the answer as 30! The reason? BODMAS! The calculation has done B1*C1 first because multiplication comes above addition (look above), then it has added A1.

To make the calculation work the way we wanted to originally, we would have to amend it like so:  =(A1+B1)*C1   This would now work as brackets are above everything else and so A1 would be added to B1 first!

Well, John set an exercise to test out the individual’s understanding of this concept before he got round to explaining how it works and on Wednesday 10th November all 6 individuals got it correct. They were from Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.  John was most impressed as it was the first time the whole class had given him the right answer in 21 years of training!

Excel courses

If you want to learn about BODMAS in Excel as well as other topics found in the package, why not take a look at our Agendas for our Excel courses on the website here. We are happy to help, contact us for more information.

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