Excel - Microsoft Excel Stdeva Function

Description

The Excel STDEV function calculates the sample standard deviation of a supplied set of values. 

The format of the function is : 

STDEV( number1, [number2], ... ) 

where the arguments, number1, [number2], etc, are one or more numerical values or references to cells containing numbers. 

If you are using Excel 2007 or Excel 2010, you can enter up to 255 number arguments to the function. However, in Excel 2003, the function can only accept up to 30 number arguments. 

Note that the Stdev function is used when calculating the standard deviation for a sample of a population (eg. if your data set records the individual heights of a sample of UK males). If you are calculating the standard deviation of an entire population, you need to use the Stdevp or the Stdevpa function. 

STDEVA & STDEV Functions

The Excel Stdeva function is very similar to the Excel Stdev function, in that both functions calculate the sample standard deviation of a supplied set of values. 

The difference between these two functions applies when an array of values, containing text or logical values is supplied to the function. In this case, the Stdev function ignores the text and logical values, whereas the Stdeva function assigns the value 0 to text and the values 1 or 0 to logical values. 

The rules for this are shown in the table below, compared to the rules for the Stdev function. 

Stdeva Function Example

The following spreadsheet shows the Excel Stdeva function used to calculate the standard deviation of the set of values in cells A1-A4 and in cells A1-A6. 

The format of the functions are shown in the spreadsheet on the left and the resulting values are shown in the spreadsheet on the right. 

Note that, in the spreadsheet above, the function in cell B2 includes the values in cells A5 and A6. In this case, the logical value TRUE in cell A5 is treated as the value 1 and the text in cell A6 is treated as the value 0. This is shown by the example in cell B3, in which cells A1 - A4 and the values 1 and 0 give the same result as the standard deviation calculation for cells A1 - A6. 

Stdevpa Function Error

If you get an error from the Excel Stdeva function this is most likely to be the #VALUE! error: 

Common Errors