Normal Distribution in Google Sheets
The bell curve that powers every financial forecast.
Interactive Sandbox
10,000 simulations running live in your browser.
When to use it
The Normal (Gaussian) distribution models uncertainty around a known mean — your best estimate — with a standard deviation that captures how wide your confidence interval is. It's symmetric, so upside and downside risk are treated equally. Use it whenever you have historical data that clusters around an average: revenue growth rates, cost variances, or process cycle times.
- Revenue and expense variance modeling in FP&A
- Manufacturing tolerance and quality control (Six Sigma)
- Portfolio return distributions in finance
- Performance benchmarking with well-understood averages
How to build it
Native Sheets Formula
=NORM.INV(RAND(), mean, stdev) Using native RAND() requires you to copy this formula 10,000 times manually, which severely lags the browser.
The MonteSheet Way
MonteSheet uses a local browser engine to run 100,000 iterations in 4 seconds without writing a single formula.
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