Parentheses

Parentheses are used to specify the order of operations in an equation. If the order is different we can get often get a different result even if we use the came components.

For example:

In both cases we have only used the numbers 2, 3 and 4 in the equation with addition and multiplication. However as you can see the order of operation effects the result.

Excel performs the operation inside the parenthesis first so for this expression Excel will first ,multiply 3 by 4 and then add 2 returning a result of 14.

With this equation containing many sets of parenthesis Excel with automatically perform the operation on the inner most parenthesis first and that work outwards.

So Excel will first add 5,4 and 9 then divide that answer by 2 then multiply that by 3 and finally subtract 6 from the subtotal giving a result of.......21