What does ={TABLE(,J213)} in the fx Box Mean?

[Rodby]

I am using a worksheet put together by a couple of finance professors, and I
ran across the above function. It seems to refer, somehow, to a Normal
Distribution, but I cannot use the "trace precedent" audit function to find
out what it is doing.

 

[Michael R Middleton]

Rodby -

I am using a worksheet put together by a couple of finance professors, and
I ran across the above function. It seems to refer, somehow, to a Normal
Distribution, but I cannot use the "trace precedent" audit function to
find out what it is doing. <

That's an array function entered using the Data | Table menu command. See
Excel's built-in Help.

- Mike

www.mikemiddleton.com

 

[Harlan Grove]

Michael R Middleton wrote...
....

That's an array function entered using the Data | Table menu command. See
Excel's built-in Help.

Bad advice. There are no entries for the DATA function in online help
(actually, it's not a function in the normal sense, rather a syntactic
anomaly). As for searching on 'data table', there are a few topics, but
none of them mention the DATA pseudofunction.

There's *NOTHING* in online help, Excel/VBA help or even the XLM help
files that even mention the DATA pseudofunction. It's pure chicken &
egg when it comes to discovering what it is if you don't know it's
produced by the Data > Table menu command.

 

[Harlan Grove]

Harlan Grove wrote...
....

Bad advice. There are no entries for the DATA function in online help
(actually, it's not a function in the normal sense, rather a syntactic
anomaly). As for searching on 'data table', there are a few topics, but
none of them mention the DATA pseudofunction.

....

I screwed up. It's the TABLE function, not the DATA function. Doh!

Still, there's no mention of it in Excel online help, but there are
entries for the Table method of the Range class in Excel/VBA help and
the TABLE function in XLM help (note the apparent overloading - TABLE
does different things in worksheets and macro sheets). Still, there's
no mention of the TABLE pseudofunction as it appears and works in
worksheets.

 

[Rodby]

Thanks for the response. I tried to find the answer in Microsoft Help, and
while it discusses the array and table functions, it doesn't have anything
for{= TABLE (,X)}.

Interestingly, when I click on the fx box, on the tool bar, the {} go away,
and there is a NORMALDIST button that appears at the far left.

I cannot seem to get the audit tool to work
Any thoughts?

 

[Michael R Middleton]

Rodby -

There are explanations and examples for "data tables" in Excel's offline
Help.

In most of the recent versions of Excel, if you choose Help | Microsoft
Excel Help | Index, and type "data table" without the quotes, you should
find most of the information you need. Recent versions have a Help page
called "About data tables."

Look at the Help information for worksheet data tables. The phrase "data
table" is also used for chart data tables, which is not related to your
current interest.

Data tables are an important feature of Excel for automating what-if
sensitivity analysis. If you want a step-by-step example using data tables
for sensitivity analysis of decision tree models, go to www.treeplan.com,
and from the "Download Free Tryout" page, get treeplan.pdf, "Decision Trees
Using TreePlan." See pages 32-34.

After you understand how Excel data tables work, you will likely also
understand why the auditing tool cannot provide its usual assistance.

- Mike

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

[Rodby]

Thanks, you've given me at least a path to follow.

 

[Rodby]

Thanks, I appreciate the help. I will keep on working on it.