MAX / MIN / RANK — Excel guide
Extremes, rankings, and spread: the functions that answer 'best', 'worst', 'top three', and 'how unusual is this value'.
MAX
The largest number in a range (MIN is the mirror).
- MIN on a date column finds the earliest — dates are numbers, smallest = oldest.
- Text and blanks are skipped; an all-text range returns 0 — a suspicious answer worth checking.
- Conditional extremes: MAXIFS / MINIFS take criteria pairs like SUMIFS (2019+).
LARGE
The k-th largest value — a parameterized MAX.
- SMALL is the mirror (k-th smallest); SMALL(range, 1) = MIN.
- Ties count separately: with two 95s, LARGE 1 and 2 both return 95.
- Top-three average in one line: =AVERAGE(LARGE(range, {1,2,3})).
RANK.EQ
Where a value places in a list — 1 = largest by default.
- Third argument 1 flips to ascending — for golf scores and response times.
- Ties share a rank and SKIP the next (1, 2, 2, 4). RANK.AVG averages instead (2.5).
PERCENTILE.INC
The value a given fraction of the data falls at or below.
- QUARTILE.INC(range, 3) - QUARTILE.INC(range, 1) = the IQR, the outlier-resistant spread.
- STDEV.S for samples (divides by n-1), STDEV.P when you have the whole population.