[posted and mailed]

"Conrad Carlberg" wrote in
ink.net:

Hi Tom,

1. The functions are just ignoring the alpha data. Whence your
suspicion that they're substituting a numeric value?

2. While the functions are not substituting values, a useful technique
in similar situations is to use the IF function to test for a
condition and to return the array you want. Something such as this,
array-entered with Ctrl-Shift-Enter:

=AVERAGE(IF(ISNUMBER(A1:A20),A1:A20,""))

But please note that you needn't do this in the situation you
describe. It's more often used when you're specifying a different sort
of condition, e.g.:

=AVERAGE(IF(A1:A20="Ishtar"),B1:B20,"")

also array-entered.

3. I suspect that the second argument to the PERCENTILE function
you're using does not fall between 0 and 1. Of course, that's just my
opinion; I could be wrong.

--
C^2
Conrad Carlberg

Excel Sales Forecasting for Dummies, Wiley, 2005



Thanks, Conrad. You were right about the percentile. As soon as I
changed it to a decimal fraction, it yielded reasonable results.


Thanks again,

Tom