An Introduction to Excel's Normal Distribution Functions ... | normal distribution excel
(Downloadtheworkbook.)[1]WhenavisitoraskedmehowtogeneratearandomnumberfromaNormaldistribution[2] shesetmetothinkingaboutdoingstatisticswithExcel.Manyofuswereintroducedtostatisticsinschoolandthenforgotwhatlittlewelearned…oftenwithinsecondsofthefinalexam.Also,whenwetookstatistics,manyofusweren’ttaughthowtouseitwithExcel.Thisisunfortunate,becauseinbusinessit’softenusefultohavesomegraspofthattopic.Forallthesereasons,Ithoughtitwouldbeworthwhiletobrieflyexplorenormal—or“bell-shaped”—curvesinExcel....
(Download the workbook.)[1]
When a visitor asked me how to generate a random number from a Normal distribution[2] she set me to thinking about doing statistics with Excel.
Many of us were introduced to statistics in school and then forgot what little we learned…often within seconds of the final exam.
Also, when we took statistics, many of us weren’t taught how to use it with Excel. This is unfortunate, because in business it’s often useful to have some grasp of that topic.
For all these reasons, I thought it would be worthwhile to briefly explore normal—or “bell-shaped”—curves in Excel. This is a commonly used area of statistics, and one for which Excel provides several useful functions.
One interesting thing about the normal curve is that it occurs frequently in many different settings:
The height of each gender in a population is normally distributed. The measure of LDL cholesterol is normally distributed in adults. The width of ...