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LARGE and SMALL practice

Top three and bottom three lists are a routine request, and LARGE answers them without touching the data.

LARGE(range, k) · SMALL(range, k)

What this lesson covers

The second argument is the rank. Rank 1 is the largest for LARGE and the smallest for SMALL.

3 exercises in this lesson

  1. Task 1 · cell E10

    Find the largest revenue in E2:E7.

  2. Task 2 · cell E10

    Find the second largest revenue in E2:E7.

  3. Task 3 · cell E10

    Find the second smallest unit count in C2:C7.

Using LARGE and SMALL at work

The syntax is LARGE(range, k) · SMALL(range, k). Once it is in your hands, the work it replaces is the kind of thing that used to mean scrolling a column and hoping you did not miss a row.

This is lesson 21 of 37. It takes a few minutes, and the exercises are marked the moment you submit rather than at the end.

Where people usually slip

  • Ranges drift. Pointing at three cells when the data has six is the single most common cause of a wrong total, and it is invisible because the answer still looks plausible.
  • Copying breaks a reference. Relative references shift when a formula is copied. If a value should stay put, lock it with dollar signs.
  • The number is right, the method is not. Typing a total by hand produces the right answer once. A formula produces it again when the data changes, which is the actual skill.

How this is marked

Each exercise is checked against the result the formula should produce, and then re-run on a different set of numbers. A hardcoded answer passes the first check and fails the second, so it is rejected. That second pass is the part that makes the practice stick.

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