How to Calculate Standard Error in Excel

Microsoft Excel is an excellent tool for storing and analyzing data. It offers a wide range of statistical tools and formulas, making it easy to determine key statistics for different datasets. In this article, we’ll explain how to calculate standard error in Excel (and what it is in the first place).

What Is Standard Error?

Standard error lets you see how accurately sample data fits a larger dataset. In other words, it calculates how accurate a distribution of data is to the entire population.

It does this by calculating standard deviation, which is how far the average of your sample deviates from the average of the entire dataset.

The formula for standard error is:

Where is the standard deviation for the entire dataset and is thesquare rootof the sample size.

To illustrate the concept of standard error with an example, imagine a school with 500 students. We want to estimate the average height of the students, so we select 30 students and measure them. The average height of this sample is 160 cm.

However, if we take a sample of another 30 students, we find that the average height is 152 cm.

The variation of these sample averages against the actual population average is the standard error. The smaller the standard error, the more representative the sample mean is of the population. The larger the error, the less representative it is and the more variable the data is.

How to Calculate Standard Error in Excel

Microsoft Excel provides built-in formulas for calculating standard deviation and the square root of a set of numbers, making it very easy to calculate standard error. Here’s how to use these formulas, using a simple example:

The cell should now display the standard error of your sample. You can combine both of these formulas into one equation. Simply type=STDEV(B2:B11)/SQRT(COUNT(B2:B11))(selecting your data range instead of A1:A10).

Note:Make sure to follow the correctfunction syntaxto ensure that your formulas work as designed. If you aren’t sure about the syntax, you can separate each part of the standard error formula and divide them into a third cell.

Err On the Side of Caution

Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool for statistical analysis. It can also be used tocalculate other forms of varianceandloan repayments– and that’s not all. Hopefully, you’re now able to calculate standard error and you can get on to the next part of your analysis.

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

Your email address will not be published.Required fields are marked*

Comment*

Name*

Email*

Website

Welcome to Help Desk Geek- a blog full of tech tips from trusted tech experts. We have thousands of articles and guides to help you troubleshoot any issue. Our articles have been read over 150 million times since we launched in 2008.

HomeAbout UsEditorial StandardsContact UsTerms of Use

How to Calculate Standard Error in Excel#

What Is Standard Error?#

How to Calculate Standard Error in Excel#

Err On the Side of Caution#