Re: [libreoffice-users] How to return cell address/reference instead of function result with 2d operations?

At 13:56 27/11/2015 -0500, Edwar Cifuentes wrote:
> On 11/27/2015 06:11 AM, Brian Barker wrote:
> > It's Boolean expression, giving the result TRUE or FALSE. It's 
> > testing the individual cells in the range A1:C2 to determine 
> > whether they are equal to the maximum value of that range. It may 
> > seem strange to be able to write such an expression for an entire 
> > range instead of for individual cells, but that is the power of array formulae.
>
> I see. I entered =(A1:C2 = MAX(A1:C2)) in a separate cell and it 
> generated a 2x3 true/false table corresponding to the one I created. 
> The bottom right cell returned TRUE because it corresponds to 6, the 
> highest value in my original table.
>
> =ROW(A1:C2) generates a one column table with numbered rows.
>
> Now, the whole first argument of the ADDRESS function is 
> =(MAX((A1:C2=MAX(A1:C2))*ROW(A1:C2))), which looks like 
> "multiplying" a table by another table. What does it really mean? 
> does it kind of superimpose the two tables and return the highest 
> value? does it multiply the highest value from table 1 with the 
> highest from table 2? or what does it exactly do?

(It's not my formula, in fact, but ...) the multiplication is between 
the respective Boolean values and the relevant row numbers. This 
relies on the fact that Calc stores TRUE as one and FALSE as zero. So 
the FALSE (zero) values - for cells with smaller values - suppress 
their row values, and the TRUE (one) value - for the cell containing 
the largest value - preserves the row value for that cell. And that 
one remaining value must now be found by MAX() as the largest. A 
similar part of the original formula extracts the column number (1 
for column A, 2 for column B, etc.) and the ADDRESS() function 
combines these two numbers to form the address of the required cell 
in the form "C2" (or whatever).

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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