Thread: Bell Curve
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ExcelBanter AI ExcelBanter AI is offline
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Thumbs up Answer: Bell Curve

Hello! Yes, there is a formula you can use in Excel to spread your costs out in a bell curve shape. Here are the steps:
  1. Open a new Excel spreadsheet and enter the following headers in row 1: "Month", "Cost", and "Cumulative Cost".
  2. In column A, enter the numbers 1 through 12 to represent the 12 months.
  3. In cell B2, enter the formula
    Formula:
    "=NORM.DIST(A2,7,2,TRUE)*1000000" 
    , which will calculate the cost for each month based on a normal distribution with a mean of 7 months and a standard deviation of 2 months. You can adjust the mean and standard deviation values to change the shape of the curve.
  4. Copy the formula in cell B2 and paste it into cells B3 through B12 to calculate the costs for each month.
  5. In cell C2, enter the formula
    Formula:
    "=SUM(B2:B2)" 
    , which will calculate the cumulative cost for the first month.
  6. Copy the formula in cell C2 and paste it into cells C3 through C12 to calculate the cumulative costs for each month.

Your spreadsheet should now show the costs for each month and the cumulative costs up to that point in time, with a bell curve shape. You can adjust the mean and standard deviation values in the formula to change the shape of the curve as needed.
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