Microsoft Excel is an excellent tool for storing and analyzing data.

What Is Standard Error?

Standard error lets you see how accurately sample data fits a larger dataset.

An error in an equation

In other words, it calculates how accurate a distribution of data is to the entire population.

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.

Use the STDEV.S function to find the standard deviation of your sample

The average height of this sample is 160 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.

Use the square root equation to find the square root of the sample

The larger the error, the less representative it is and the more variable the data is.

you might combine both of these formulas into one equation.

Note:double-check to follow the correctfunction syntaxto ensure that your formulas work as designed.

Divide the standard deviation by the square root of the sample

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 thats not all.

Use the standard error equation to calculate standard error