[MOS] Microsoft Office Specialts Exam 77-420: Excel 2013 Help!!

[k_mahajan]

Hi everyone,

Today i gave my MOS Exam 77-420 : Excel 2013. i scored 980/1000. overall the exam was easy. i got 100% in all objectives except 90% in 'Applying Formulas & Functions'. I know where i did wrong. But i still can't figure out how to solve that problem because of which i couldn't score a perfect 1000. I hope if anyone here could help me.

I know i did 2 functions wrong: CONCATENATE & RIGHT. Although it was a scenario based exam but still i remember the 2 questions. Here they are:

---

[B]1)[/B] [U][B]INSERT THE NAME AND COUNTRY OF THE RUNNER WITH THE FASTEST TIME[/B][/U]

[I]CELL G3[/I]



[LIST]
[*]USE FUNCTION [B]CONCATENATE[/B] 
[*]TEXT1: name of gold medalist in 2012 London 
[*]TEXT2: " - " 
[*]TEXT3: country code of gold medalist in 2012 London 
[/LIST]


[B]2)[/B] [U][B]INSERT FAMILY NAME OF RUNNER WITH SLOWEST TIME.[/B][/U]

[I]CELL G4[/I]


[LIST]
[*]USE FUNCTION [B]RIGHT[/B] 
[*]TEXT: family name of runner with slowest Olympic time 
[*]NUM_CHARS: 5 
[/LIST]

---

There were 2 worksheets. I was to use these functions in the second worksheet. The data which were required by the functions were on the first worksheet in a table. The table headers were: Number, Year, City, Name, Country code, Time. The data in the table was sorted in descending order of time.


Here's What I Did: I didn't used any look-up or reference function inside these functions. I directly used the Cell Name (eg. B4) for the reference data in the function. When i matched the answer with the Reference images they provided, it was correct, but i think that's not what they asked for...!!


**Note: Also i forgot to mention one thing. My friend also gave this exam and he also got the same document to create in the exam. He also scored 980/1000. He did the same thing wrong which i did. He also got 90% in 'Applying Formulas & Functions'.
But the thing is he did these 2 questions different from me. By using nested functions. He used LOOK-UP in one question and MATCH & INDEX in the other. His answer also matched the reference images. But still even this was not the correct solution.


I have searched all over and i can't figure out how would this be solved. we both got the same document to create and both got the same score. Both tried different ways to solve these questions. Both got the correct answer as matched with the reference JPEGs. But still both got it Wrong.
Please Help.


PS: On the second worksheet, where i was asked to use these functions. One thing which was available (i don't know whether it was of some use or not), was the time of the fastest and slowest runner which i was asked to find out using max and min function. And for the times of the runner, i got the data from the First Sheet. As i mentioned earlier, every data was available in the table on the first worksheet.

 

[Zack Barresse]

I would think it would be something like CCC posted, but I'm assuming you'd want to use the MIN function for the fastest time as opposed to using MAX. But likewise using MAX to find the slowest time and use RIGHT to only get the surname not the whole name (assuming the 'Name' column has 'First Last' format).

Personally I don't take those tests. I've taken one which covered Excel 2003 (it was a month or two before they released the 2007 test, big changes with the ribbon and all). The only reason I took that test is because my employer wanted me to take it (I don't think they thought I knew what I claimed), and they paid for it, so what the hell. The problem with these tests is they're very specific in the nature of what is considered a correct answer (as you've obviously found out). Since there are multiple ways to skin the proverbial Excel cat, I think that's a very narrow way of thinking when it comes to grading someone on skill. Because of this fickle nature of these tests, if the directions said to use CONCATENATE, then I seriously doubt using & is the same thing, even though the results are the same.