AVEARGE is effectively SUM/COUNT. By having the extra comma, you are
increasing the COUNT by 1. SUM is not altered because it isn't referencing
anything, but you get the wrong answer.

--
HTH

Bob Phillips

(replace somewhere in email address with gmail if mailing direct)

"SYerby" wrote in message
...
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