The AVEDEV function

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Contents

Welcome back to our frequent blog of Excel functions from A to Z. Today we look at the AVEDEV function.

The AVEDEV function

thought AVEDEV was an Indian cricket captain of the decade of 1980. Apparently not. Despite this, the definition of this statistical function can be shocking: returns the average of the absolute deviations of the data points from their mean, In other words AVEDEV measures variability in a data set.

It is not as complicated as it seems. If you have a set of numbers and calculated their average, the to mean – and then, for each value, took the average of how far each value was from the average (ignoring if the distance was positive or negative), I would calculate this value. Not as statistically robust as calculating the standard deviation, but it's probably a better understood measure.

The AVEDEV The function uses the following syntax to operate:

AVEDEV (number 1, [number2], …)

The AVEDEV The function has the following arguments:

  • number 1, Number 2, …: number 1 it is always mandatory, but the following numbers are optional. The function takes between one and 255 arguments for which you want the average of the absolute deviations. Additionally you can use a single array or an array reference instead of comma separated arguments, assuming this is the delimiter of your function.

It should be noted at the same time that:

  • AVEDEV is influenced by the unit of measurement in the input data
  • Arguments must be numbers or names, arrays or references containing numbers.
  • The logical values ​​and text representations of the numbers you type directly in the argument list are counted.
  • If an array or reference argument contains text, logical values ​​or empty cells, those values ​​are ignored; despite this, cells with zero value are included
  • The equation for the average deviation is:
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