iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Common Math Functions

Numbers offers a wide range of functions for managing your adventures in arithmetic, including lots of advanced functions tailored for accountants, statisticians, and rocket scientists. Although these brainy beauties are often crucial to folks working in a specific field, these functions are too esoteric for the general public, often requiring specialized knowledge even to understand why you might use them. Some of these topics would require a whole other book (and possibly a graduate degree) to explain. If you wouldn’t know a multinomial coefficient from a multinational coffeehouse, then chances are you’ll never use anything close to all the functions iWork offers. As a result, this book doesn’t delve into these deep, dark nooks and crannies.

Instead, this section provides a review of commonly used math functions. Although this treatment only scratches the surface of the function library’s numerical know-how, you can, as always find a complete list of all iWork formula functions in the Function Browser.

Tip

The Numbers Help menu also includes a handy overview of functions, including introductory material for working with financial and accounting functions. To check it out, choose Help → “iWork Formulas and Functions Help”.

The Quick-Formula Functions and Basic Math

In the last chapter’s review of instant calculations and quick formulas, you met the most popular functions in Spreadsheet Land. SUM, COUNT, MAX, MIN, AVERAGE, and PRODUCT are the most commonly used ...