fbpx
Search
Close this search box.

All articles in 'Formula Challenges' Category

How much long service bonus to pay? [Homework]

Published on Dec 8, 2017 in Formula Challenges

‘Tis Friday and it is too hot in my home office to stand and type a longish post. So, let’s keep this skirtish (short and pretty).

How would you calculate long service bonus?

Let’s say you are HR manager at BigLargeInc. and you are looking at Julia’s service details. You have her employment start date, current date, her leave without pay details, as shown below.

 

You need to calculate how many days of continuous service Julia had (ie total service – duration on leave without pay). How would you write the formula?

Continue »

Find out if a number has repetitive digits [formula homework]

Published on Oct 3, 2017 in Formula Challenges
Find out if a number has repetitive digits [formula homework]

Time for a quick formula finesse check. Let’s say you have a number in A1. What formula can you use to find out if it has duplicate digits.

For example, if A1 has 123405, then answer should be FALSE

and if A1 has 123455, then answer should be TRUE

Go ahead and post your answers (formulas, VBA or M script) in the comments section.

Continue »

Can you solve this blood pressure problem? [IF Formula Homework]

Published on Nov 4, 2016 in Formula Challenges, Learn Excel
Can you solve this blood pressure problem? [IF Formula Homework]

Over on Facebook, Kristin asks, Help, my blood pressure is going thru the roof. I can’t seem to solve this blood pressure problem. 

Let’s simplify Kristin’s problem.

You have some data in the format shown above.

And you want to find out the BP category for each reading, using some rules. Read on to solve the problem.

Continue »

Calculate sum of top 10 values [formulas + homework]

Published on Aug 4, 2015 in Formula Challenges, Learn Excel
Calculate sum of top 10 values [formulas + homework]

Analyzing top n (or bottom m) items is an important part of any data analysis exercise. In this article, we are going to learn Excel formulas to help you with that.

Let’s say you are the lead analyst at a large retail chain in Ohio, USA. You are looking at the latest sales data for all the 300 stores. You want to calculate the total sales of top 10 stores.  Read on to learn the techniques.

Continue »

Calculate maximum change [homework]

Published on Mar 21, 2014 in Formula Challenges
Calculate maximum change [homework]

Today, lets see how good your formula skills are.

Calculate maximum change

Can you calculate what is the maximum change in product sales between 2 months for above data?

Continue »

Formula Challenge 001 – Return everything from a string after the first block of numbers (Part 4.)

Published on Jul 22, 2013 in Formula Challenges, Posts by Jeff
Formula Challenge 001 – Return everything from a string after the first block of numbers (Part 4.)

Welcome back to another gripping episode of “When good formulas go GREAT”.  Just like the immortal combatants in the classic 1986 movie Highlander, over the last three posts in this series our Excel nerds have been locked in an ages-old battle to decapitate. A text-string, that is. Not each other. So far we have seen […]

Continue »

Formula Challenge 001 – Return everything from a string after the first block of numbers (Part 3.)

Published on Jul 19, 2013 in Formula Challenges, Posts by Jeff
Formula Challenge 001 – Return everything from a string after the first block of numbers (Part 3.)

Welcome back to yet another gripping episode of “When good formulas go GREAT”. We’re working up the singles charts to the number one hit “Formula Challenge 001 – Return everything in string after first block of numbers” By way of a quick refresher, this formula challenge calls for a formula to return a substring from […]

Continue »

Formula Challenge 001 – Return everything from a string after the first block of numbers (Part 2.)

Published on Jul 17, 2013 in Formula Challenges, Posts by Jeff

Today we look at the third place winner from our inaugural Formula Challenge, a neat solution provided by Sajan.

Continue »

Formula Challenge 001 – Return everything from a string after the first block of numbers (Part 1.)

Published on Jul 16, 2013 in Formula Challenges, Posts by Jeff
Formula Challenge 001 – Return everything from a string after the first block of numbers (Part 1.)

This new series introduces a new author to Chandoo.org, Jeff.
Jeff will pose a number of Excel based Formula Challenges and then explain how some of the solutions work in a manner similar to the Formula Forensics series.

In this first post of the series we look at how to extract a string from the right of a block of Numbers in a larger string.

Continue »