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Data Analysis Data Analysis Basics Getting to Know Your Data Is Our Data Normal?

Can someone explain why Ben uses absolute references?

It's a bit confusing to me...

1 Answer

He uses absolute references because he is dragging the cell down to copy it to the 2 cells below. When you drag a cell down to copy it like that, any relative references would change so that they referenced the cells that were the same distance from them as they were from the original cell. This would mean that the formula in cell B12 would change to reference cells S3:S26412, B2, B7, and B11, and the formula in B13 would reference S4:S26413, B3, B8, and B12.

It should be pointed out that since these formulas are in the same column, it's not necessary to make the entire reference absolute, as it should still work by putting the $ between the column and the row number.