You are correct.

QUARTILE() ignores blanks, but considers zeros real values. Here is a
little trick:

If your data in A1 thru A20 is:
11
22
29
30
30
35
39
39
42
45
49
53
55

64
67
72
78
88
92
then =QUARTILE(A$1:A$20,1) will return 32.5
In B1 enter:
=A1
and copy down. Notice that B14 is now a zero rather than a blank and
=QUARTILE(B$1:B$20,1) returns 30

Have a pleasant weekend!
--
Gary's Student


"pdmunger" wrote:

When I use the "quartile" and "percentile" functions in Excel 2003, I get a
wrong answer unless all the cells referenced are not empty.

Is there a "fix" for this, other than populating all the referenced cells?