The Y-value will generate a height of each person's point along the bell curve. Sort the data so the scores appear lowest to highest.Ĭalculate a Mean using the AVERAGE function.Ĭalculate a Standard Deviation using the STDEV function.Ĭalculate the Y value to the right of the scores using =NORM.DIST(L2,$H$2,$H$3,FALSE). To fit them on a bell curve, you need to figure out the height or Y-value for each employee. Using fewer data points, the bell curve still worksįor Jimmy's data set, the actual average scores of his employees are essentially points along an x-axis. If I would have used only 7 data points, the curve would look like this:

I generate 31 numbers to create a nice smooth curve. In the image above, the numbers in A10:A40 are essentially 'fake data points'. The height of each point is calculated using =NORM.DIST(x,mean,standard deviation,False). In that video, I generated that spanned from -3 Standard Deviations to + 3 Standard Deviations around a mean.įor example, if you have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10, I would create an x-axis that ran from 70 to 130. I then generate 30 points along the x-axis that span a hypothetical population of people. In Podcast 1665 - Create a Bell Curve in Excel, I explain that to create a bell curve, you need to calculate the mean and standard deviation. When Jimmy asked the question during my Power Excel Seminar, I thought back to one of my more popular videos on YouTube. Jimmy in Huntsville wants to plot a bell curve showing the average scores of several people.

Mean and standard deviation plot excel