Histogram using Excel FREQUENCY function

Question

In Excel 2010, I have a list of values in column A and a bin size is specified in B1. This allows me to create histograms with N bins using this formul

Answer 1

The only answer I can think of is to use a macro to resize the output range of your formula.

Here's a simple snippet that illustrates the idea.

Dim result As Variant
Dim targetCols As Long

result = Evaluate(fmla)
With rng
  targetCols = UBound(result, 1) - LBound(result, 1) + 1
  .Resize(1, targetCols).FormulaArray = fmla
End With

I wrote about a more complete implementation last year - more error-tolerant , 2-dimensional outputs, etc

EDIT: However... The formula you're using won't work with this approach: it relies on its output range size being known at input. Here's an alternative suggestion that can be automatically resized:

We can create a set of workable bins with something like this:

={(ROW(OFFSET(A1,0,0,CEILING((MAX(A:A)-MIN(A:A))/B1,1)+1,1))-1)*B1}

where as before this is the number of bins

CEILING((MAX(A:A)-MIN(A:A))/B1,1)+1

which we then use to create a range using OFFSET() (the target doesn't matter since we're not using its values). Then we take the ROW() of each cell in the range (subtracting 1 to get a set of values starting with zero) and multiply by our bin size. You may want to shift the range of values (by adding MIN(A:A) for example).

The big difference is that this formula doesn't need to be input across a range for the Evaluate() VBA function to be able to produce a range output.

To get the histogram, either plug the output from the bin formula into FREQUENCY() or drop in the whole formula. The auto-resizing should work either way.

If you were particularly opposed to running a macro (I have it available via a custom Ribbon button and a hotkey combination) then you could use a Worksheet_Change event to watch for opportunities to apply it. I can't say for sure if that would have any unpleasant side-effects.