Final answer:
In Excel, 'Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally' helps remember the order of operations, also known as precedence rules. The order is Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, Addition and Subtraction, which Excel follows when performing calculations.
Step-by-step explanation:
In Excel, the acronym 'Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally' is a mnemonic used to remember the order of operations in calculations, technically known as precedence rules. The order is Parentheses, Exponents(including roots, such as square root), Multiplication and Division (from left to right), Addition and Subtraction(from left to right). When performing calculations, Excel follows these precedence rules.
For instance, if you have the expression 5+2*3 in an Excel cell, Excel will do the multiplication first, because multiplication comes before addition in 'Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally'. Thus, the result will be 11, not 21. If you wanted Excel to add 5 and 2 first, you would use parentheses: (5+2)*3. The result will then be 21, because parentheses have the highest precedence.
Learn more about Order of Operations