How to Find Relative Frequency in Excel Pivot Table?

Sharing is caring!

Are you looking to find the relative frequency in an Excel pivot table? Relative frequency shows each value in a data set as a percentage of the total, which can be very useful for analyzing and comparing data. In this article, we’ll walk through the steps to calculate relative frequency in an Excel pivot table, making it easy to gain insights from your data.

What is Relative Frequency?

Relative frequency refers to the percentage each value represents in a data set. To calculate relative frequency, you take the frequency of each value and divide it by the total of all frequencies. This shows the proportion each value represents, with all relative frequencies in a data set totaling 100%.

For example, let’s say you have data on the number of sales made by each salesperson:

To calculate the relative frequency, you would divide each person’s sales by the total of 119 sales:

Seeing the data in terms of relative frequency makes it easy to compare the proportions and see that Amy made the highest percentage of sales at 34.5% of the total.

Why Use Relative Frequency in a Pivot Table?

Pivot tables are a powerful tool in Excel for summarizing, analyzing, and presenting data. They allow you to easily manipulate data, perform calculations, and generate reports.

Using relative frequency in a pivot table lets you quickly see the percentage breakdown of your data. Benefits of this include:

• Comparing proportions: Relative frequencies allow easy comparison of how much each value represents as a percentage of the total.
• Analyzing trends: When you view data over time using relative frequencies, you can spot trends in the proportions.
• Presenting findings: Showing percentages is often more intuitive and impactful for communicating insights.
• Normalizing data: Converting to relative frequencies puts everything on the same scale, controlling for differences in totals across data sets.

So how do you actually calculate relative frequency in an Excel pivot table? Let’s go through it step-by-step.

Step 1: Organize Your Data

To create a pivot table to find relative frequency, your data needs to be organized in a tabular format with rows and columns, like the sales data shown earlier. Make sure each column has a header describing the data.

It’s also best practice to remove any blank rows or columns from your data set before creating the pivot table.

Step 2: Insert a Pivot Table

With your data properly formatted, you can now insert a pivot table.

1. Select any cell within your data set.
2. Go to the Insert tab on the Excel ribbon.
3. Click on PivotTable in the Tables group.
4. Verify the range for your pivot table is correct and choose where to place it (new worksheet or existing worksheet).
5. Click OK.

Excel will create a new worksheet with a blank pivot table and the PivotTable Fields pane on the right where you can build your pivot table.

Step 3: Add Fields to Your Pivot Table

In the PivotTable Fields pane, you’ll see all the headers from your data set listed as available fields. To set up your pivot table:

1. Drag the field you want to group by (like Salesperson) into the Rows area.
2. Drag the numeric field you want to find the frequency of (like Number of Sales) into the Values area.

Excel will automatically generate the pivot table, showing the total for each value in the rows field.

Step 4: Display Frequency as a Percentage

The pivot table now shows frequency, but we want to see relative frequency as a percentage. To convert to percentages:

1. Right-click on any value in the data area of the pivot table.
2. Select Show Values As > % of Grand Total.

The pivot table will now display each value as a percentage of the total, showing the relative frequency.

Step 5: Format the Percentages (Optional)

To make the percentages easier to read, you can format them to show fewer decimal places.

1. Select the cells showing the percentages in the pivot table.
2. Right-click and select Format Cells.
3. Choose Percentage as the category and set your desired number of decimal places.
4. Click OK to apply the formatting.

Example: Using Relative Frequency in Pivot Table

Let’s walk through an example to solidify the concepts. We’ll use this data set showing the results of a survey question:

Following the steps outlined above:

1. Insert a pivot table from this data set.
2. Drag the Response field into the Rows area to group by the response options.
3. Drag the Frequency field into the Values area to sum up the number of responses for each option.
4. Right-click a value in the data area and select Show Values As > % of Grand Total to convert to relative frequencies.
5. Select the percentages and format them to display 1 decimal place.

The result is a pivot table showing the relative frequency for each survey response:

From this, you can easily see that the most common response was Agree at 41.2%, while only 7.3% selected Strongly Disagree. The pivot table with relative frequencies makes the data easy to analyze and interpret.

Final Thoughts

Finding relative frequency in an Excel pivot table is a quick and easy way to analyze your data as percentages. By following a few simple steps to create a pivot table and convert frequencies to percentages, you’ll be able to compare proportions, spot trends, and gain meaningful insights from your data.

The applications of this technique are endless – from survey analysis to sales reporting and beyond. And once you’ve mastered calculating relative frequencies in a pivot table, you can explore even more advanced Excel tools and functions to take your data analysis skills to the next level.

FAQs

Vaishvi Desai

Vaishvi Desai is the founder of Excelsamurai and a passionate Excel enthusiast with years of experience in data analysis and spreadsheet management. With a mission to help others harness the power of Excel, Vaishvi shares her expertise through concise, easy-to-follow tutorials on shortcuts, formulas, Pivot Tables, and VBA.