Why this matters
A reporting officer is often asked quick questions: how much did we sell last month, how many households received inputs, which community has the most absences? With a few core formulas you can answer these in minutes and show your working, which is exactly what employers check in a practical test.
How a formula works
Every formula starts with an equals sign. It can refer to cells by their address, like B2, or to a whole range, like B2:B200. When the values change, the answer updates.
Here is an invented example sheet for a chop bar in Tamale. Column A holds the date, column B the dish, column C the number of plates and column D the takings in cedis.
The functions that do most of the work
- SUM adds numbers:
=SUM(D2:D200)gives total takings. - AVERAGE finds the mean:
=AVERAGE(D2:D200). - COUNT counts cells that hold numbers; COUNTA counts cells that are not empty.
- COUNTIF counts rows that meet a condition:
=COUNTIF(B2:B200, "Banku")tells you how many sales were banku.