What does the -- in a Sumproduct Formula Mean?

[mgaworecki]

What does the -- in a Sumproduct Formula Mean?

I have seen it around but I can't seem to find exactly what it does or what it mean?

Thanks,

Mark

[NBVC]

it coerces the arrays of Trues/Falses generated by each condition within the Sumproduct formula to 1's/0's, respectively... this way the arithmetic can be performed in the function as designed

[mgaworecki]

Thanks, I appreciate your quick response, once again.

[Colin Legg]

It's called negation. That might give you better search results.

As NVBC mentioned, if we perform a mathematical operation (such as negation) on a non-numeric type (such as a number stored as a string or a logical value), this mathematical operation coerces the non-numeric type into a numeric type. This is a particularly useful concept when using array formulas and SUMPRODUCT.

Negation is preferred to other mathematical operations (such as addition or multiplication) because it is more efficient. Negation is also more efficient than the various functions that are available to explicitly convert the data types too.

Colin