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

  • Last updated on January 19, 2011
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Chandoo

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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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6 Responses to “Using Lookup Formulas with Excel Tables [Video]”

  1. Damian says:
    November 9, 2010 at 8:20 am

    H1 !
    this is my very first comment.
    Can you use same technique with Excel 2003 lists ?
    thanks 😀

    Reply
  2. Tom says:
    November 9, 2010 at 6:58 pm

    Thanks, Chandoo! I like seeing the sneak peak of what's to come on Friday too 🙂

    Reply
  3. Chandoo says:
    November 11, 2010 at 8:09 am

    @Damian.. Welcome to chandoo.org. Thanks for the comments.

    Yes, you can use the same with Excel 2003 lists too.

    @Tom.. You have seen future and its awesome.. isnt it?

    Reply
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    April 24, 2014 at 8:07 am

    […] Using Tables – Video 1, Video 2 […]

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  6. Q.fg says:
    May 4, 2015 at 8:36 pm

    Hi, is there a vlookup formula for the second example (IDlist)? I used a similar formula to look up the ID for the person, but the reverse way (look up the person with the ID) comes up N/A.

    Reply

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