How To Calculate Standard Deviation in Google Sheets

Do you need to calculate standard deviation, but don’t have a calculator handy?

No problem!

You can use Google Sheets to do the job for you.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to do it.

So whether you’re a student or a business professional, this guide will come in handy.

Let’s get started!

How to Calculate Standard Deviation in Google Sheets

Calculating the Standard Deviation in a dataset entails identifying how much the dataā€™s values stray or deviate from the mean altogether.

In simple terms, you can add or subtract the standard deviation from the mean to attain each value or a value close to it.

Manually solving for standard deviation is quite taxing. However, since Google Sheets and Excel are typical applications for data management, itā€™s a given that formulas for standard deviation exist.

This is because standard deviation is an essential value in statistics as it indicates how close or far each data point is to the mean.

In this article, we will break down the steps on how you can calculate the standard deviation of a dataset using Google Sheets.

Calculating the Standard Deviation Using the STDEV formula in Google Sheets

The ā€œSTDEVā€ formula is a formula on Google Sheets that functions to solve the standard deviation of a chosen set of values in a sheet. The methods utilizing this formula are pretty much similar. The only difference is how you input the data or its origin.

This is the dataset that we will be using for this article.

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Suppose you have a group of heart surgeons and want to find the standard deviation of the number of surgeries they performed in the year 2021.

We will utilize Google Sheets to solve the standard deviation.

Method 1. Ā STDEV Formula with a Range of Cells

For this method, the STDEV formula is input together with a range of cells.

This is for those data within adjacent cells or cells within the same column.

Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Step 1. Load up your sheet

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Step 2. Select the cell where you want the Standard Deviation to appear

Select the cell where you want the solved Standard Deviation to appear.

The selected cell should be highlighted in blue.

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Step 3. Identify the coordinates of the cells

The coordinates of the cells can be found at each end of the sheet.

The coordinates consist of a column letter and a row number.

From this example, we can identify that the coordinates of the desired data are from B2 to B5.

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Step 4. Input the STDEV formula

After identifying the coordinates of the cells containing the data, we want to solve the standard deviation, and we can now input the STDEV formula.

Click the formula bar and type:

=STDEV(B2:B6)

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Step 5. Click ā€œEnterā€

After clicking ā€œEnterā€ on your keyboard, the standard deviation should automatically appear within the cell you initially clicked.

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Method 2. Ā STDEV Formula with Specific Cells

For this method, the STDEV formula is input together with the coordinates of specific cells. This is for when the data you want to solve the standard deviation for is not found in succession.

Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Step 1. Load up your sheet

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Step 2. Select the cell where you want the Standard Deviation to appear

Select the cell where you want the solved Standard Deviation to appear.

The selected cell should be highlighted in blue.

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Step 3. Identify the coordinates of the cells

The coordinates of the cells can be found at each end of the sheet.

The coordinates consist of a column letter and a row number.

From this example, we want to identify the standard deviation of the surgeries performed by Dr. Janeski, Dr. McCenley, and Dr. Leander.

Thus, the coordinates we will use are B2, B4, and B6.

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Step 4. Input the STDEV formula

After identifying the coordinates of the cells containing the data, we want to solve the standard deviation for, so we can now input the STDEV formula.

Click the formula bar and type:

=STDEV(B2,B4,B6)

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Step 5. Click ā€œEnterā€

After clicking ā€œEnterā€ on your keyboard, the standard deviation should automatically appear within the cell you initially clicked.

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Method 3. Ā STDEV Formula with Specific Values

This method is the same as the first two methods.

The only difference is that instead of inputting the coordinates of the cells, you will add the specific values you want to solve the SD.

Step 1. Load up your sheet

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Step 2. Select the cell where you want the Standard Deviation to appear

Select the cell where you want the solved Standard Deviation to appear.

The selected cell should be highlighted in blue.

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Step 3. Input the STDEV formula with the specific values

This time, instead of getting the coordinates of the cells, you have to manually input the values you want to solve.

For this example, we want to solve for all values in the dataset.

Thus, you have to type the following formula into the formula bar:

=STDEV(56,43,60,44,51)

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Step 4. Click ā€œEnterā€

After clicking ā€œEnterā€ on your keyboard, the standard deviation should appear within the cell you initially clicked.

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Summary

That’s the end of this tutorial.

We hope this article helps you learn how to calculate Standard Deviation in Google Sheets.