Maximum: what it means and how to read it
In the report: max — The largest value.
How to read it
Together with min it shows the span of the answers and catches typos: a 99 on a 1–5 scale stands out here.
In plain words
A teacher gave her 30 students a quiz and graded each answer from 1 to 5. Before looking at averages she asked for max in every column. Four columns showed 5, which is fine. One column showed 99. Nobody can get 99 on this quiz, so she found a typing mistake in row 7, where somebody had meant to type 9 and hit the key twice. Now she can fix it, and the average of that column will not be pulled far up by a single wrong number.
Where you see it
STATS_DESCRIPTIVE— Column-wise descriptive statistics with flexible metric selection and optional column filtering.
Related values
- Range — max − min.
- Missing values — The number of empty answers and of cells that do not match the column type (text in a number column), inside the selected rows.
- Variance — The mean squared deviation from the mean: sample formula (n − 1); with pop = TRUE in Settings, population (n).
- Standard deviation — The square root of the variance: sample formula (n − 1); with pop = TRUE in Settings, population (n).
- Coefficient of variation — std / mean; empty when the mean is 0.
Get it in your sheet
One formula in a cell gives the whole report, Maximum included. ALS Stats is a free add-on for Google Sheets™.
Install ALS Stats from Google Workspace Marketplace (opens in a new tab)