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A support analyst is summarizing 15 tickets (columns A–C: TicketID, Status, Priority) by two-axis OR rules — e.g., "tickets that are Open OR High priority." Their formula in G2 was:
=COUNTIF($B$2:$B$16, E2) + COUNTIF($C$2:$C$16, F2)
For the (Open, High) row, it returned 13 — but the true count of distinct tickets matching either condition is only 10. The same kind of inflation shows up on the other rows too. Where did the extra 3 in this row come from?
The error: the analyst's formula adds the two counts independently. Tickets that satisfy both conditions (Open AND High) get counted twice — once by each COUNTIF. There are 3 Open-High tickets in the data, hence the off-by-3.
The standard fix is inclusion-exclusion: add the two counts, then subtract the intersection:
=COUNTIF(status_range, E2) + COUNTIF(priority_range, F2) - COUNTIFS(status_range, E2, priority_range, F2)
The two COUNTIFs are the per-axis counts; the trailing COUNTIFS removes the double-counted overlap.
Your task:
Graded cells: G2 (Open ∪ High → 10), G3 (Open ∪ Medium → 9), G4 (Closed ∪ High → 9).