stdevpa is a function to calculate standard deviation but -evpa doesn't
match. what's the abbreviation?

"curious" wrote:
stdevpa is a function to calculate standard deviation
but -evpa doesn't match. what's the abbreviation?

The base function name is "stdev" -- an abbreviation for
the "std dev". The "p" is for the population -- as opposed
to a sample -- std dev. The "a" is means that text ("ascii"?)
and logical values are included in the computation. (This
is explained better in the STDEVA help text.) Compare with
STDEV() and STDEVP().

You can see the difference by setting up the following
values in A1:A7: {1, hi, 2, TRUE, 4, FALSE, 5 }. In other
cells, put the following formulas:

=STDEVP(A1:A7)
=STDEVP(A1,A3,A5,A7)
=STDEVPA(A1:A7)

The first two will be the same.

If you replace "hi" with 0, TRUE with 1 and FALSE with 0,
the first and third will then be the same.