PlanMaker AVEDEV: Mean Absolute Deviation with Worked Checks

• Introduced: Documented by the PlanMaker 2010 manual; the first introduction release is not established.
• Availability: Documented in PlanMaker 2026; this is not a final working-version endpoint.
• Scope: The reference belongs to the 2026/NX manual family. Individual FreeOffice and mobile-build availability remains unverified.
• Checked: October 14, 2026, against the official function reference. Examples use vendor results and independent calculations; no native PlanMaker test was performed.

=AVEDEV(Number1 [, Number2, Number3 ...])

The current AVEDEV reference accepts individual values, ranges and arrays. The first argument is required; further arguments are optional. Do not type the square brackets.

For referenced cells, the entry says empty cells, text and logical values are ignored. It separately says directly supplied text or logical arguments can be taken into account. That distinction is not a complete conversion table for arbitrary strings, so the worksheets here use numeric cells rather than relying on coercion.

AVEDEV is a mean absolute deviation about the arithmetic mean. It is not the median absolute deviation, variance or standard deviation. Its units match the input measurements, unlike the squared units of variance.

Create a blank sheet named Deviations. Put Value, Deviation and Absolute deviation in A1:C1. Enter 2, 2, 2, 3 in A2:A5.

In E2 enter =AVERAGE(A2:A5); expect 2.25. Enter =A2-$E$2 in B2 and =ABS(B2) in C2. Fill B2:C2 through row 5.

Use E4 =AVEDEV(A2:A5), E5 =AVERAGE(C2:C5) and E6 =SUM(C2:C5)/4. All three expected values are 0.375. The absolute distances sum to 1.5, then divide by four observations.

In E8 enter =SUM(B2:B5); expect 0. Simply averaging the signed deviations would therefore hide the spread. AVEDEV avoids that cancellation by using their absolute values.

For SoftMaker’s equal-value control, enter =AVEDEV(2,2,2,2) in E10. Expect 0, because each observation equals its mean.

Create another sheet named Processing, with Task and Minutes in A1:B1. Enter task labels A, B, C, D in A2:A5 and numeric times 20, 20, 20, 30 in B2:B5.

Put =AVERAGE(B2:B5) in D2 and =AVEDEV(B2:B5) in D3. Expected results are 22.5 minutes and 3.75 minutes, respectively. The second quantity summarizes average absolute distance from 22.5; it is not a maximum deviation or a service guarantee.

In C2 enter =B2/60 and fill to C5 to express the same durations in hours. Enter =AVEDEV(C2:C5) in D5; expect 0.0625 hours, equal to 3.75/60. Converting the data changes the numerical result in proportion to the unit scale; applying only a display format does not perform that conversion.

Keep the Processing sheet intact. In E1 put Shifted minutes and in E2 enter =B2+100; fill to E5. The new values are 120, 120, 120, 130.

Put =AVERAGE(E2:E5) in G2 and =AVEDEV(E2:E5) in G3. Expected results are 122.5 and 3.75. Adding the same constant changes the mean but leaves each distance from that mean unchanged.

This is a useful formula check, not permission to add arbitrary offsets to repair data. A missing measurement should not be replaced with zero or another invented value merely to keep a statistic calculable.

The 2010 manual prints the first two arguments outside its optional brackets; the current entry prints only the first outside them. The exact release of that documentation change and old runtime acceptance are not established. Use the current signature for the current reference scope.

The checked entry does not enumerate every exact error token, empty-input result or extreme-precision boundary. Keep numeric observations, not subtotal rows or text labels, in the selected range. A result from a small or biased dataset cannot correct the sampling method.

DEVSQ sums squared deviations instead of absolute ones. STDEV.S and VAR.S use the sample-variance framework; AVERAGE supplies the arithmetic mean used in this check.