How to Find the Nth Smallest Value with SMALL

Use SMALL to pull the fastest times, lowest prices or bottom-N values — overall or within one group.

You will learn to

• Return the k-th smallest value with SMALL
• Average the three smallest values
• Find the k-th smallest within one group

How it works

SMALL(range, k) returns the k-th smallest value: k=1 is the minimum, k=2 the second smallest, and so on. It is ideal when lower is better — race times, prices, defect counts.

Use an array constant to work with several positions at once, e.g. =AVERAGE(SMALL(C2:C11,{1,2,3})) for the average of the three fastest times. To look inside one group only, pass SMALL a filtered list: =SMALL(IF(B2:B11="40+",C2:C11),2).

=SMALL(C2:C11,3)