Find the Average of Closest 2 Numbers out of 3 [formula challenge]

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Today I am asking you a tricky formula question. This is asked by Ionel on the Introduction to VLOOKUP, OFFSET & MATCH Formulas post.

The question is,

I have data in three columns: A,B,C and I want to get the average of the closest two values out of three in each row. Could you help me with a formula for this?

Now, how would you go about it?

Calculating Average of closest 2 numbers using ExcelWhat does closest of two mean?

We can assume that close-ness is nothing but distance between 2 numbers on numeric scale. So 3 is closer to 2 and 4 compared to 1 or 5.

Your challenge:

Assuming your data is in A2:C10, what formula will you write in D2:D10 to solve this?

Go ahead and get some coffee and get thinking.

Want to cop-out?

I have posted one solution in the next comment. You can see how I went about solving it.

More Formula Challenges:

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2 Responses to “Top 10 Power BI Interview Questions & Answers”

  1. Keith says:

    Hello...
    In Power BI I have data that includes months by name only (e.g. May, April, December...)
    I need to build charts etc. but i need the months to go chronologically... not alphabetically... I cannot seem to find the fix to this.... once again, my data does NOT have an actual date attached to it (like 02/01/2023)....only month names... can i use a helper table wher i id the month names as numbers 1 thru 12? and if so, how do i manage this to work for me ?
    Thank you.
    ~Keith

    • Chandoo says:

      You need to setup an extra table to map each month name to a running number. A simple 12 row table like
      Jan 1
      Feb 2
      Mar 3
      ..
      Dec 12

      Then create a relationship between this month table and your month column
      Now, go to "table view" in Power BI and set the sort by column to month number for the month name column on this new table.
      Finally, use the new table's month name whenever you need to refer to the month name in the visuals.
      They will be chronologically arranged.

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