In addition to dreid1011's comments, I'd also note that you are passing arguments when you call most Excel functions.
For example, in the formula: =MAX(A1,B1) you are passing two range arguments to the MAX function.
If you look at Excel's Help for the MAX function, you'll see the syntax is MAX(number1, [number2], ...), and there are rules applied to the arguments number1, number2, ... etc, i.e.
- number1 is required, number2 ... number 255 are optional.
- Arguments can be numbers, names, arrays or range references containing numbers.
If you start coding with VBA, you can create your own customised functions that might need particular arguments. So when your code calls these functions, you will pass the arguments that you want the function to use, i.e. in the same way you call the MAX function in Excel with the arguments you want used.