Final answer:
The correct formula for Nathan to average the sales in the range C3:C50 and round to the nearest integer is ROUND(AVERAGE(C3:C50), 0). This instruction first computes the average and then rounds the result to 0 decimal places to obtain an integer.
Step-by-step explanation:
Nathan wants to average the sales in the range C3:C50 and then round the result to the nearest integer. The correct formula to use would be ROUND(AVERAGE(C3:C50), 0). This formula first calculates the average of the numbers in the cells from C3 to C50 using the AVERAGE function. Then, the ROUND function rounds the resulting average to the nearest integer, as indicated by the second argument in the function, which is 0. This means that the average will be rounded to 0 decimal places, giving us a whole number. To see how rounding works with different numbers, consider these examples:
- 31.57 rounds "up" to 32 (the dropped digit is 5, and the retained digit is even)
- 8.1649 rounds "down" to 8.16 (the dropped digit, 4, is less than 5)
- 0.051065 rounds "down" to 0.05106 (the dropped digit is 5, and the retained digit is even)
- 0.90275 rounds "up" to 0.9028 (the dropped digit is 5, and the retained digit is even)
The other options such as AVERAGE(C3:C50), ROUNDUP(AVERAGE(C3:C50), 0), or ROUNDDOWN(AVERAGE(C3:C50), 0) do not apply here as they either do not round the result or they would not always round to the nearest integer. Therefore, option (a) is the correct choice.