How to Calculate Mean Squared Error (MSE) in Microsoft Excel
Works for Google Sheets as well
In statistics, the mean squared error (MSE) is an important metric that measures the amount of error in a statistical model. It’s often used to assess the accuracy of a model that’s used to predict future values.
In this tutorial, we’ll explain what MSE is in more detail and then show you how to calculate MSE in Excel.
What Is Mean Squared Error?
The mean squared error (MSE) is a calculation that measures the average squared difference between estimated and actual values in a dataset. In other words, it estimates the amount of error in a statistical model. For the statistics geeks out there, it calculates how closely a regression line fits a set of data points.
For example, say you have a model that predicts the value of sales you’ll receive as a software company over a year. At the end of the year, you plug in the actual sales values that you generated. You can then calculate the MSE to see how well your model predicted the outcome.
MSE is calculated by taking the average of the squared differences between the predicted and actual values of the target variable.
The MSE formula looks like this:
Where:
A lower error value indicates that the model has a smaller standard error and is better at predicting the target variable. MSE is widely used in statistical regression and data analysis and can be helpful in comparing different models or tuning parameters to improve the accuracy of predictions.
This looks confusing, but it isn’t too hard to follow when we break it down in the following sections.
How to Calculate Mean Squared Error in Microsoft Excel
There are two main ways you can calculate MSE in Microsoft Excel: the SUMSQ function, theAVERAGE function, and the MSE formula. We’ll use the example below to show you how to calculate MSE using each of these functions:
In this simplified example, we’ll look at fictional sales values for each month (Column A). The estimated values are represented in Column B and the actual values in Column C.
The SUMSQ function in Excel is used to calculate the sum of the squares of numbers in a range. Here’s how to use it to calculate MSE:
The AVERAGE function in MS Excel is used to calculate the average of a range of numbers. This method returns the same result as the SUMSQ function, but each step is performed manually.
Statistical Analysis in Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel has long been one of the most powerful tools for data analysis. Hopefully, with this tutorial, you can now use Excel to calculate MSE easily. And, since they’re so similar, you should be able to perform the same calculations inGoogle Sheets.
Jake Harfield is an Australian freelance writer whose passion is finding out how different technologies work. He has written for several online publications, focusing on explaining what he has learned to help others with their tech problems. He’s an avid hiker and birder, and in his spare time you’ll find him in the Aussie bush listening to the birdsong.Read Jake’s Full Bio
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