How do you calculate the average difference in Google Sheets?

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To calculate the average difference in Google Sheets, you would first select the cells containing the values you want to find the difference of. Then, you would use the formula “=AVERAGE(A1:A10)” (replacing A1:A10 with the range of cells you want to calculate the average difference for). This will calculate the average of the differences between each value in the selected range. For example, if the values were 5, 3, and 7, the differences would be 2, 4, and 2, and the average difference would be 2.67. This calculation can be useful for finding the overall trend or change in a set of data.

You can use the following formula in Google Sheets to calculate the average difference between two ranges:

=ARRAYFORMULA(AVERAGE(B2:B11 - C2:C11))

This particular formula calculates the average difference between the values in the range B2:B11 and C2:C11.

The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.

Example: How to Calculate Average Difference in Google Sheets

Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that shows the number of points scored and number of points allowed during various games by some basketball team:

Suppose we would like to calculate the average difference between the values in the Points Scored column and the Points Allowed column.

We can type the following formula into cell E2 to do so:

=ARRAYFORMULA(AVERAGE(B2:B11 - C2:C11))

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

We can see that the average difference between the values in the Points Scored column and the Points Allowed column is 4.6.

In other words, this team scores 4.6 points more than they allow per game, on average.

How This Formula Works

Recall the formula that we used to calculate the average difference between the two columns:

=ARRAYFORMULA(AVERAGE(B2:B11 - C2:C11))

For example, it calculates:

  • Row 1: 100 – 101 = -1
  • Row 2: 104 – 100 = 4
  • Row 3: 123 – 98 = 25
  • Row 4: 98 – 103 = -5
  • Row 5: 110 – 109 = 1
  • Row 6: 135 – 120 = 15
  • Row 7: 128 – 114 = 14
  • Row 8: 100 – 100 = 0
  • Row 9: 95 – 104 = -9
  • Row 10: 101 – 99 = 2

It then uses the AVERAGE function to calculate the average of all these differences:

Average Difference = (-1+4+25-5+1+15+14+0-9+2) / 10 = 4.6.

Note: Since we used two arrays in our formula, we had to wrap the ARRAYFORMULA function around the AVERAGE function.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Google Sheets:

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