Excel 365: Use Statistical Functions

Course description

This course walks through a set of practical statistical functions in Excel 365 that help you make sense of everyday data. You’ll begin with GEOMEAN, a way to find a “typical” value when your numbers include growth or a few unusually big spikes. We’ll compare it to the regular AVERAGE so you can see how each responds when outliers appear, and when GEOMEAN can give you a steadier picture. Next, you’ll use LARGE and SMALL to pull the exact positions you care about—the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd highest (or lowest) results—so you can build quick top-and-bottom lists without sorting everything by hand. From there, you’ll work with MEDIAN to find the middle value in a list, a helpful check when a few extreme numbers would otherwise skew the story. You’ll also explore MODE to spot the value that occurs most often, using the current options that return a single most common value or multiple ties when they exist. To round things out, you’ll learn two ways to rank results: RANK.EQ, which gives tied values the same top rank, and RANK.AVG, which averages the ranks for ties. You’ll practice switching between highest-to-lowest and lowest-to-highest rankings and see how rank updates as data changes. Throughout the course, short, clear examples show how to select ranges, copy formulas safely, and avoid common hiccups—like trying GEOMEAN on negative numbers or asking for the “5th largest” when only three values exist. By the end, you’ll be able to: choose a sensible “center” for your data, highlight top and bottom performers on demand, identify repeated values at a glance, and create rankings that hold up when your list grows. These tools fit neatly into everyday tasks such as sales reviews, inventory checks, scorecards, and simple reports, giving you quick, trustworthy summaries without heavy statistics.

Course outline