Excel's formulas don't work for this, as there's no negative outflow at any
point, and all of my college textbooks are in the basement.

First iteration of my question:

Year Income
================
1 1000
2 1050
3 1102.50
4 1157.63

Now, we can see that income grew by five percent each year. We can see that
income is nearly 16% higher in year 4 than year 1. But how do I calculate the
compounded growth over four years? XIRR requires a negative to work...


Let's make it stickier:


Year Income
================
1 1000
2 1040
3 1020
4 1080

Now, income grew by eight percent over four years. Year-on-year was 4%,
-1.9%, and 5.9%, respectively. What was the OVERALL compounded growth? How do
I build a formula for THAT?

Thanks