Which of these Excel functions helps to find the average across a specific range?

The AVERAGE function in Excel is specifically designed to calculate the mean of a set of numbers within a defined range. When using this function, you can input a range of cells, and Excel will add up all the values in that range and then divide that sum by the count of numbers to yield the average.

This function is particularly useful for analyzing data sets where determining the mean value is important, such as in financial reports, academic scores, or any quantitative analysis. In contrast, other functions like SUM add up values, COUNT tallies the number of entries, and MIN identifies the smallest value, but they do not compute the average. Each of these functions serves distinct purposes, with AVERAGE being explicitly focused on finding the central tendency of a data set.