MOS Excel: Formulas and Functions 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which formula correctly calculates compound interest where rate is in B1, periods in B2, and principal in B3?
- =B3*(1+B1)^B2 (Correct answer)
- =B3*B1*B2
- =B3+B1^B2
- =B3/(1-B1)^B2
Correct answer: =B3*(1+B1)^B2
The compound interest formula is Principal × (1 + rate)^periods, represented in Excel as =B3*(1+B1)^B2.
Question 2: What is the purpose of the CONCATENATE function (or & operator) in Excel?
- Counts text cells
- Joins multiple text strings into one (Correct answer)
- Finds duplicate text
- Converts numbers to text
Correct answer: Joins multiple text strings into one
CONCATENATE (or the & operator) joins two or more text strings together into a single string.
Question 3: Which function returns the largest value in a range?
- LARGE
- MAX (Correct answer)
- TOP
- HIGHEST
Correct answer: MAX
MAX returns the maximum (largest) numeric value in a given range.
Question 4: A VLOOKUP formula has FALSE as its last argument. What does this specify?
- Approximate match
- Exact match (Correct answer)
- Case-sensitive match
- Reverse lookup
Correct answer: Exact match
FALSE (or 0) as the range_lookup argument in VLOOKUP specifies an exact match, returning an error if no exact value is found.
Question 5: What does =LEFT("Microsoft", 5) return?
- Micro (Correct answer)
- osoft
- Micro
- Micro
Correct answer: Micro
LEFT extracts characters from the beginning of a string; LEFT("Microsoft", 5) returns the first 5 characters: 'Micro'.
Question 6: Which Excel function converts text that represents a number into an actual number?
- TEXT
- VALUE (Correct answer)
- NUMBER
- CONVERT
Correct answer: VALUE
VALUE converts a text string that looks like a number into a numeric value that can be used in calculations.
Question 7: What does the AVERAGE function do with empty cells in its range?
- Treats them as zero
- Ignores them entirely (Correct answer)
- Returns an error
- Counts them as 1
Correct answer: Ignores them entirely
AVERAGE ignores empty cells and only divides the total by the count of cells that contain numeric values.
MOS Excel: Formulas and Functions 3
Which formula correctly calculates compound interest where rate is in B1, periods in B2, and principal in B3?