How an Average Is Calculated
An average is calculated by adding a group of numbers and dividing the total by the count of those numbers. The example here calculates the average for the values in column C, which comes out to 13.5. If you were calculate this manually, you’d add all the numbers, and divide the sum by 6 (11 + 12 + 13+ 14 + 15 + 16 = 81; 81 ÷ 6 = 13.5). Instead of finding this average manually, however, you can tell OpenOffice Calc to do it for you using the AVERAGE function: =AVERAGE(C1:C6)
The AVERAGE Function’s Syntax and Arguments
In OpenOffice and other spreadsheet programs such as Excel and Google Sheets, a function’s syntax refers to the layout of the function and includes the function’s name, brackets, and arguments. The syntax for the AVERAGE function is: =AVERAGE (number 1; number 2; …number30) Up to 30 numbers can be averaged by the function. A function’s arguments are the numbers affected by the function:
Argument number 1 (required)—the data to be averaged by the function Argument number 2; … number30 (optional)—additional data that can be added to the average calculations.
The arguments can contain:
a list of numbers to be averaged cell references to the location of the data in the worksheet a range of cell references
