Administration and Executive AssistantTier 920 minintermediate

TRIMMEAN vs AVERAGE

Find a typical finish time by trimming the most extreme results, not averaging every one of them in.

What you will learn

• Use TRIMMEAN to calculate a mean with a fixed proportion of extreme values excluded
• Explain what TRIMMEAN's second argument controls
• Recognise the situations where an outlier makes AVERAGE misleading but TRIMMEAN is not

Excel skills

TRIMMEAN · Descriptive Statistics

The task

Ten runners' finish times are listed, including one runner who stopped for an injury. Work out the typical finish time in Summary!B3, trimming the most extreme results rather than averaging every one of them in.

You work in a real spreadsheet in your browser, and your answer is checked against hidden traps the moment you submit.

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