Excel giving incorrect answers?!

Excel is rarely (almost never?) wrong in the answers it gives, the fault almost always lies with the logic of the formula that was used. If the formula is correct, the answer will be correct.

Having said that, you show a manual entry of 82.40 and say that is what you expect.

1. how did you calc that manually?
2. where is the formula that is producing a different answer?

You have problem with rounding the numbers.

For first attachment Try

B32

Formula:

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For second one

B17

Formula:

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Nearest cent would be .50 not .25 as the Product result is 152.34744

Originally Posted by zakeyebrat

Long story-short, I am creating several formulas and then creating equations using those formulas; however, the answers it is giving me are wrong.
I do the math on a calculator and it is giving me a different answer.

Apparently, you are expected to round intermediate calculations to 2 decimal places, as you did with 82.40 in B32 in the workbook "8-10..." (problem P8.19).

If you set your calculator to display more than 2 decimal places, you should see that B31/(B24-B18), the manual calculation that you explain in the comment for B32, is indeed about 82.40131579, which Excel displays in D22.

If you want the value of D22 to be rounded to 2 decimal places, just formatting the cell to display 2 decimal places is not sufficient. That changes the appearance, but not the actual more-precise value in the cell.

To affect the actual value, you must explicitly round the formula, to wit:

=ROUND(D21/(D20-D19), 2).

Then if you change B32 to =D22, you will see that E42 displays 59.92, which apparently is the correct answer, according to the problem statement at the top.

But note that the value in E42 is actually about 59.9225572601472. To be consistent, that formula should be explicitly rounded, as well, to wit:

=ROUND(NPV(B24,E38:E41)+E37, 2)

Aside.... In this particular case, E42 displays 59.92 even if the value in D22 is not explicitly rounded. But that is only a coincidence.

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Explicit rounding is the key to correcting the value of B17 in the workbook "8-11..." (problem P8.23).

B17 displays 152.35, but apparently the correct answer is 152.25, according to the problem statement at the top.

The reason is: the unrounded value in B16 is 5.25336.

To round the value, the formula in B16 should be:

=ROUND(B10*(1+B11), 2)

Then B17 displays 152.25.