title: Excel: Sum of largest numbers
body: <p>Excel offers the function LARGE, and when combined with SUM, it allows summing up the top N largest numbers. This works fine for cases where the area from which these numbers are drawn is continuous, for example with this examlple:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SUM(LARGE(A1:A10),{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This would extract the top 7 largest numbers from an area of 10 cells (that are contingious). How do I do that if I have only every second cell, i.e. I want to use A1, A3, A5, ... ?</p>
  
  <p>Here the data in the spreadsheet:</p>
  
  <pre><code>A     B     C      D    E
  
  3.5   80   2.5    90    5.5
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to find the largest number from 3.5, 2.5, 5.5 etc... The ONLY condition that exists between neighbour numbers (e.g. A and B) is that B is always larger than the other. The reason why I need to keep both numbers is purely for reasons of completeness.</p>
  
  <p>In short: How do I use the LARGE function with a set distributed individual cells?</p>