You can use the PROB function in Google Sheets to calculate the probability that an event occurs.
This function uses the following basic syntax:
PROB(data, probabilities, low_limit, [high_limit])
where:
- data: The range of numeric x values.
- probabilities: The range of probabilities associated with each x value.
- low_limit: The lower limit on the value for which you want a probability.
- high_limit: The upper limit on the value for which you want a probability.
The following two examples show how to use this function in practice.
Example 1: Calculating Dice Probabilities
Suppose we would like to calculate the probability that a dice lands on a 4, 5 or 6 on a given roll.
To calculate this probability, we can first enter one column of possible values the dice could land on along with the probability of each outcome:
Note: Since the dice is equally likely to land on each value, the probability is the same for each value.
We can type the following formula into cell D2 to calculate the probability that the dice lands on a 4, 5 or 6 on a given roll:
=PROB(A2:A7, B2:B7, A5, A7)
The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:
The probability turns out to be 0.5.
Example 2: Calculating Sales Probabilities
Suppose the following dataset shows the probability of a company selling a certain number of products in the upcoming quarter:
We can type the following formula into cell D2 to calculate the probability that the company makes either 3 or 4 sales:
=PROB(A2:A5, B2:B5, A4, A5)
The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:
The probability turns out to be 0.7.
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the PROB function in Google Sheets here.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Google Sheets:
How to Calculate Deciles in Google Sheets
How to Calculate Cumulative Percentage in Google Sheets
How to Extract Top N Values from Range in Google Sheets
