Some standard measures of the central tendency include the mean, the median, and the mode.
The spread of data means how much individual results differ from the average.
Variance and standard deviation are much better measures of spread.
The variance is simply the standard deviation squared.
Variance and standard deviation are both measures of how spread out it is.
Several functions let you calculate variance in Excel.
Below, we’ll explain how to decide which one to use and how to find variance in Excel.
If you were calculating them by hand, you would start by finding the mean for all your data.
Doing so would give the variance, a kind of average for all the squared differences.
You will use it to measure the spread of data.
If this is confusing, don’t worry.
Excel does the actual calculations.
Sample or Population?
Often your data will be a sample taken from some larger population.
You want to use that sample to estimate the variance or standard deviation for the population as a whole.
In this case, instead of dividing by the number of observation (n), you divide byn-1.
slide in your data into Excel.
it’s crucial that you be able to select all the data without selecting any other values.
For the rest of this example, the data is in the range A1:A20.
If your data represents the entire population,enter the formula"=STDEV.P(A1:A20)."
The standard deviation will be displayed in the cell.
How to Calculate Variance in Excel
Calculating variance is very similar to calculating standard deviation.
Ensure your data is in a single range of cells in Excel.
If your data represents the entire population, enter the formula “=VAR.P(A1:A20).”
The variance for your data will be displayed in the cell.
TheSTDEVand STDEV.S functionsprovide an estimate of a set of data’s standard deviation.
The syntax for STDEV is=STDEV(number1, [number2],…).
The syntax for STDEV.S is=STDEV.S(number1,[number2],…).
