The Excel GEOMEAN Function
Related Function:
HARMEAN
GEOMETRIC MEAN
The Geometric Mean is a measure of mean that indicates the typical value of a set of numbers. This measure can only be used for positive values.
The geometric mean of a set of values, y1, y2, ..., yn is calculated by the formula:
Note that the Geometric mean is always less than or equal to the Arithmetic mean.
For further information on the geometric mean, see the Wikipedia Geometric Mean page.Function Description
The Excel Geomean function calculates the geometric mean of a supplied set of values.
The syntax of the function is:
GEOMEAN( number1, [number2], ... )
Where the number arguments are one or more positive numeric values (or arrays of numeric values), for which you want to calculate the geometric mean.
In current versions of Excel (Excel 2007 and later), the function can accept up to 255 number arguments, but in Excel 2003 the function can only accept up to 30 number arguments. However, each argument can be an array of values or a range of cells, each of which can contain many values.
Geomean Function Example
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2.5 | =GEOMEAN( A1:A5 ) |
| 2 | 3 | |
| 3 | 0.5 | |
| 4 | 1 | |
| 5 | 3 |
Cell B1 of the above spreadsheet on the right shows a simple example of the Excel Geomean Function, used to calculate the geometric mean of the values in cells A1-A5.
In this example, the Geomean function returns the value 1.622671112.
Further details and examples of the Excel Geomean function are provided on the Microsoft Office website.
Geomean Function Errors
If you get an error from the Excel Geomean function this is likely to be one of the following:
Common Errors
| #NUM! | - | Occurs if any of the supplied numeric values are negative. |
| #VALUE! | - | Occurs if any of the supplied values are non-numeric. |