How do I plot mean and sd on the same graph?

[Ginkostar]

<!-- / icon and title -->Hello,

i would like to plot mean and standard deviation like this:

http://www.nzfooddaily.co.nz/Portals/0/blogs/graph-food-science-blog.jpg

I already have a dataset of mean and SDs, but i really don't have a clue on how to show them on a graph.

Thanks for any hint

Cheers!

 

[btadams]

Just make a bar chart and add error bars to it (right-mouse click on the series in the chart and choose Format Data Series and then click the Y Error Bars tab).

Alternatively, the data could better be displayed using boxplots. Do a google search on Excel and Boxplots and you should find instructions.

 

[Ginkostar]

Thanks for your answer! Error bars are what I was looking for.
(Boxplots are messing my graphs too much, but thx anyway)

Still have a problem: since I have a table with standard deviations, and would like to add them as error bars, I need to select a bidirectional error bar and insert the error amount as "custom" -> "positive and negative" from my dataset.
Is there a better way than simply split my SD and add them as positive and negative error?

(i really have lot of data and many series to plot, it ll therefore simplify my life)

Thanks again!

 

[btadams]

Not sure if I understand the problem correctly, but if you have your sd's in say C2:C100, then in order to add ± 1 s error bars, you would enter that same range in the two custom error bars boxes