Microsoft® Excel® 2010 Formulas & Functions Inside Out

DSTDEV()

Syntax. DSTDEV(database,field,criteria)

Definition. This function estimates the standard deviation of a population based on a sample of data in a column in a list or database that match the specified conditions.

Arguments

• database (required) The cell range that makes up the list or database

• field (optional) Indicates which column is used in the function

• criteria (required) The cell range containing the field names and the filter criteria

Background. The standard deviation is an important measure of spread and describes the deviation from the arithmetic mean. It is a measure of dispersion where the more spread out the data is around the mean, the higher the standard deviation. The standard deviation is the square root of the variance.

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