It's probably looking for the next cell to include in the average but there
is no more information thus you are getting the weird results. You would
have to look at the result the bad formula gave you and then the correct
result to try and figure out what data was being added or withheld from the
bad formula result.

"SYerby" wrote:

I have the following simple funtion in a spreadsheet and noticed that it did
not produce the anticipated result when checking my numbers:

=AVERAGE('specimen data'!B5,'specimen data'!B11,'specimen
data'!B17,'specimen data'!B23,'specimen data'!B29,'specimen
data'!B35,'specimen data'!B41,)

The comma after the B41 cell seems to produce a different answer than
anticipated and correct answer is produced when the comma is removed:

=AVERAGE('specimen data'!B5,'specimen data'!B11,'specimen
data'!B17,'specimen data'!B23,'specimen data'!B29,'specimen
data'!B35,'specimen data'!B41)

How is the last comma in the first function affecting the calculation? Is
it including other cells, or is it ignoring cells in the function?

Thanks,

Scott