Formulas are little plays. Parentheses are the stage directions. Without them, the actors guess… and the plot wanders. Most spreadsheet errors aren’t dramatic; they’re quiet: a total a hair too high, an average off by one cell, a minus sign treated like decoration. Order of operations is ruthless about what gets calculated first, so you have to be generous with parentheses. Not to show off, but to remove doubt. Write the formula you mean, then test it with toy numbers where you know the answer (2s and 10s are perfect). If it breaks, it’s not the data’s fault. Tighten the stage directions and run the scene again. “Correct” isn’t a feeling; it’s reproducible.
