Doing some math with Numeric fields

Some of the steps presented for string operations are also suited for some math. Calculator is the first step you should look for if you intend to do simple operations, for example, addition, subtraction, division, percentage, among others.

For math operations, there is also the Formula step. The advantage of Formula compared to Calculator is that you can state more elaborated expressions that contain logical, mathematical, and relational operators. Among the available functions, there are some statistical options such as MAX, MIN, and Average.

As an example of how to use a Formula step, suppose that you have three Integer fields named a, b, and c and you want to create a new field as follows: If all the values - a, b and c—are positive, the new field will be the minimum value among them. In another case, the new field will be zero. The formula can be stated as IF(AND([a]>0;[b]>0;[c]>0); Min([a];[b];[c]); 0).

Note that in a Formula step, the names of the fields are enclosed among square brackets, and the parameters of functions are separated by a semicolon.

Take into account that all of these operations work on fields in a single row. In later chapters, you will learn to perform typical operations that involve the entire dataset, for example, calculating the average of a field along with all rows.