What is your average hiding?
An average is one number pretending to be a whole dataset. Descriptive Statistics returns the full picture, mean, median, spread, skew, and a confidence interval, so you can see what the average is hiding.
Analytics Starter Statistics free
After you install, this is the model to open.
One Table That Describes Your Numbers
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
The tool reads the same column you do, and disagrees with your gut in useful ways:
- Mean
- $408.60
- Median
- $413
- Std deviation
- $34.09
- 95% CI half-width
- ±$15.96
The mean sits below the median and the skewness of -2.18 says why: the surprises in this business live on the downside, and one rainy day drags the average while barely moving the middle. The confidence row is the quiet star, the true long-run daily average sits within about $16 of $408.60 at 95% confidence. Paste any column you currently judge by its average and read the honest version.
The model
Twenty days of daily revenue from one food truck, including the rainy Tuesday that did $291. One column in, the classic sixteen-row summary table out.
| Daily revenue ($) | 20 days, $291 to $452 |
| Mean / median | calculated |
| Standard deviation | calculated |
| Skewness | calculated |
| Confidence interval (95%) | calculated |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
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- Can you get the same random numbers back?Reproducible Random Draws, With a Seed
- Did the new format really rate better?Two Groups, Ranked Feedback, One Answer
- How do you know a forecast method actually works?Make a Demand Series to Test a Model
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Statistics in Google Sheets.