hyphen
- Thread starter daphne
- Start date
SirJB7
Excel Rōnin
Hi, daphne!
The trick of the 2 dahses, 2 minus signs in fact, is to convert logical values (true, false) into numeric values, and hence allowing to perform arithmetic operations.
There's another way to do that, and it's multiplying (as the main operation of the SUMPRODUCT function, sum of products) each matrix instead of separating them by commas:
=SUMPRODUCT((A1:A10="Luke Skywalker")*(B1:B10="West")*(D1: D10))
Hope it helps.
Regards!
The trick of the 2 dahses, 2 minus signs in fact, is to convert logical values (true, false) into numeric values, and hence allowing to perform arithmetic operations.
There's another way to do that, and it's multiplying (as the main operation of the SUMPRODUCT function, sum of products) each matrix instead of separating them by commas:
=SUMPRODUCT((A1:A10="Luke Skywalker")*(B1:B10="West")*(D1: D10))
Hope it helps.
Regards!
Sajan
Excel Ninja
Hi Daphne,
Adding to SirJB7's comment, in Excel a TRUE value is equivalent to a value of 1, while a FALSE value is equivalent to a value of 0 (zero).
The 2 dashes are actually two minus signs. A single minus sign forces Excel to evaluate a value (such as TRUE or FALSE) to return a number (-1 or 0). By adding a second minus sign, the value is negated.
For example, -(TRUE) returns -1.
--(TRUE) returns 1
(A1:A10="Luke Skywalker") is a comparison that returns values of TRUE;FALSE;etc.
The double negation (i.e. --) converts those values into the corresponding 1s and 0s.
Hope that helps.
-Sajan.
Adding to SirJB7's comment, in Excel a TRUE value is equivalent to a value of 1, while a FALSE value is equivalent to a value of 0 (zero).
The 2 dashes are actually two minus signs. A single minus sign forces Excel to evaluate a value (such as TRUE or FALSE) to return a number (-1 or 0). By adding a second minus sign, the value is negated.
For example, -(TRUE) returns -1.
--(TRUE) returns 1
(A1:A10="Luke Skywalker") is a comparison that returns values of TRUE;FALSE;etc.
The double negation (i.e. --) converts those values into the corresponding 1s and 0s.
Hope that helps.
-Sajan.