Summary
I’ve lost count of the number of people over the years who have told me that they can’t “do” Microsoft Excel because they’re no good at math. This got me thinking: do you need to be good at math to be good at Excel, or can clear and logical thinking get you by? Let’s take a look in more depth.
You Can Get By in Excel Without Math Skills
Microsoft Excel has so many user-friendly and automated tools that most people with even a basic understanding of math can begin, create, and save even a relatively complex worksheet.
For example, when you first open the program and click “More Templates” in the top-right corner of the welcome screen, there are hundreds of templates to choose from. Straightaway, Excel is ready to do the complex stuff for you, so you can just concentrate on inputting your figures.
Then, once you double-click a template to open it, all the necessary formulas are already entered into the relevant cells. This means that you don’t even need to think about the types of mathematical operations you need to perform to achieve your goal.
In this example, the invoice already contains cells with calculations embedded within the IFERROR function, a step which, if done manually, would take a certain level of math and syntactical knowledge to achieve.
Even if you start from scratch, you don’t always need to know mathematical jargon to create a calculation. Here, clicking the “Fx” button next to the formula bar, typingmultiply valuesinto the search bar of the Insert Function dialog box, and clicking “Go” tells me the function I need to use.
At this point, you still don’t really need to know how multiplication works. When I click “OK,” a second dialog box opens, and I can either type the values I want to multiply in each Number field, or click the cells containing them.
What’s more, if you’re typing a formula manually, Excel tooltips help you with the calculation’s syntax.
In general, functions are designed to reduce the need for mental arithmetic or mathematical expertise. By design, they already have pre-defined operations, saving you from having to work out a way to get things done. Some functions are even designed for non-mathematical purposes—like TEXTSPLIT, which splits text strings into columns or rows—meaning you don’t need any math skills at all to use them.
In many cases, knowing what Excel can automate is more of a requisite skill than math expertise.
Here, I’ve created a PivotTable and PivotChart from a simple table of data. Putting the original data together required no math knowledge, and generating the PivotTable and PivotChart took only a few clicks of my mouse. However, Ididneed some understanding of PivotCharts and PivotTables, which require more database and software expertise than math expertise.
I think it’s fair to say that, so far, you don’t need to be Pythagoras or Archimedes to work your way around an Excel spreadsheet. In fact, this is even more the case today, thanks to the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot in Excel.
Do you need to work out the trend in a dataset? How about converting a series of distances from meters to feet? Or maybe you want to know the key insights from a table of figures. No matter the complexity of your mathematical task, Copilot can do it for you in seconds off the back of a conversation-style command you input.
Overall, thanks to user-friendly, automated tools and modern-day tech integrations like AI, there’s a good chance you can get by in Microsoft Excel with a fundamental understanding of math, especially if you’re a clear and logical thinker.
Math Skills Can Be Crucial in Excel
Despite Microsoft Excel offering many tools that help you along the way when it comes to mathematical operations, it’s hard to deny that the more you understand math, the more likely you are to understand Excel.
Let me put it this way: math and Excel skills overlap in many areas. For example:
Excel canrecommend a chartbased on the data you select. However, this feature relies on algorithms that might not understand the nuances of your data, and it is more likely to struggle if your dataset is complex and multidimensional.
There’s also the general principle of problem-solving—understanding what types of mathematical operations you need to perform will go a long way to helping you turn a real-world problem into a working spreadsheet of data. Indeed, Excel is like a powerful calculator—it’ll calculate what you tell it to calculate, even if what you tell it is wrong!
And while I’m on the topic of problem-solving, both math and Excel require this skill in abundance, so being good at one can often mean you’re probably good at the other.
This is also true for jobs that require Excel skills—if you’re applying for a position as an accountant, you’re likely to need a solid mathematical foundation as well as a good understanding of Excel. The same could be said for roles in data management, financing, budgeting, and data analysis.
You could say that all these arguments are undermined by the existence of Microsoft Copilot, which can solve most kinds of math problems you pose. However, for Copilot to work properly, you need to know the right commands to feed into the AI tool.
For example, if you want Copilot toreturn any values in column C that are at least two-thirds of the square root of the value in D1, and multiply the third-largest of these values by the mean of the values in column D, you have to know the lingo before Copilot can get anywhere near the desired outcome.
On top of that, although AI can perform tasks with high degrees of accuracy, it isn’t ever fully reliable—you still need to have the knowledge to verify what it’s produced. Indeed, even Microsoft itself says that although “sometimes Copilot will be right, other times, [it will be] usefully wrong.” This is where a decent understanding of mathematical concepts can come into play.
In short, yes—having a good understanding of math operations and concepts will smooth your Excel experience, especially if you’re looking to perform complex calculations. Personally, I don’t want to rely on Copilot to do the work for me, since I enjoy the pleasure of crafting a complex formula and making it work. As a result, I need at least a solid understanding of math to get the right results, and if you’re in the same boat, so do you.
The Verdict: Are Math Skills Needed for Excel Proficiency?
There’s no doubt that the rise in automated tools in Microsoft Excel is reducing the need for people using the program to have high-level math skills. That said, having good math skills will definitely boost your Excel proficiency and efficiency, as you’re more likely to know what route to take to solve a mathematical problem.
If you’re a casual spreadsheeter who uses Excel at home more than at work, a high school level of math understanding will probably give you access to more functions than you need, but this standard of expertise can only get you so far.
On the other hand, if you’re expected to use Excel in the workplace to execute more complex numerical operations, being mathematically savvy will make your life a whole lot easier.
But don’t go out of your way to elevate your math skills if you’re just starting off in Excel. Being an expert mathematician doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an expert in Excel—the program requires software-specific skills that no math tutorials will teach you. Instead, gaining some computing knowledge and learning how to communicate with AI might be more appropriate routes to take.
