For example, you can also use the below formula: = STDEV ( B2:B5, B6 ) Calculating Standard Deviation with a Condition/Filter You can also combine a range and a cell reference (or value). This can be useful when you have the values in non-contiguous cells. You can also use the individual cell reference instead of hard coding the values in the formula, as shown below: = STDEV ( B2, B3, B4, B5, B6 ) If you have a lot of values, it’s best to have these in Google Sheets cells and then use the range as the argument. This would be recommended only when you have a couple of values that can be entered manually. You can manually enter the values in the formula, as shown below: = STDEV ( 67, 83, 89, 95, 77 ) There are some more ways you use the STDEV formula in Google Sheets. You can use the below formula: = STDEV ( B2:B6 ) Suppose you have the following dataset and you want to get the standard deviation value of these scores. Now let me show you some examples of calculating standard deviation in Google Sheets using the STDEV formula. Using the STDEV Formula in Google Sheets to Calculate Standard Deviation Note that there need to be at least 2 values in the arguments for the formula to work.
A combination of values and location ranges. Here, the arguments can be of four types: It really is this simple! You don’t need to know any formula or be a statistics genius.īelow is the Syntax of the Standard Deviation formula in Google Sheets: =STDEV(arguments) Google Sheets has the STDEV function, which takes your dataset as the input and gives you the standard deviation value. So let’s see how you can do that! STDEV Formula in Google Sheets There are in-built formulas in Google Sheets that will take care of everything. You don’t need this when trying to calculate the standard deviation in Google Sheets. I have just shown you the formula to let you know what it means. Xi is the value of each item in the list. This deviation (also called variance) is nothing but the average of the squared differences from the mean. The standard deviation is usually calculated by finding the square root of variance. A high standard deviation value tells us that most of the data points are away from the mean (or there could be some outliers in the dataset). A low standard deviation value tells us that most of the data points are closer to the average value of the dataset (the mean value). While the mean gives a value that represents the entire data, the standard deviation tells how far the data is from this mean.Īnd what does this standard value can tell us about the data: Now, if the mean score is 70 and the standard deviation is 10, it means that most of the student’s score is in +/- 10 range from the mean (i.e., most students has marks between 60 and 80). Standard Deviation of a dataset tells you how much the data deviates from the mean.įor example, suppose you have a class of 50 students and their score in the Math exam. Other Standard Deviation Formula in Google Sheets. Calculating Standard Deviation with a Condition/Filter. Using the STDEV Formula in Google Sheets to Calculate Standard Deviation.