VARP, VAR.P and VARPA for population variance.VAR, VAR.S and VARA for sample variance.There are three sample variance formulas and three population variance formulas in Excel: They represent a РІР‚СљpopulationРІР‚Сњ in the statistical sense. For example, a company may have a few hundred or few thousand employees with data on each employee. Population variance is still practical with smaller populations. Of course, in real life we usually settle for a smaller sample from a larger population. If youРІР‚в„ўve weighed them all, youРІР‚в„ўd use population variance.

Under the assumption that the past predicts the future, it would mean that something with low variance is safer and more predictable.Р”Р‡or example, if youРІР‚в„ўre looking at the weight of left-handed people, then the population includes every individual on Earth whoРІР‚в„ўs left-handed. Investors use variance to estimate the risk of a given investment.Р”Р‡or example, by taking a stockРІР‚в„ўs value over a period of time and calculating its variance, youРІР‚в„ўll get a good idea of its volatility in the past. From a purely statistical perspective, itРІР‚в„ўs a good shorthand way to express how spread out a set of data is. So itРІР‚в„ўs a good thing that Excel can automate the process! What Do You Use Variance For? However, if you have hundreds or thousands of values, it would take forever to do manually.

So as you can see, itРІР‚в„ўs not a hard value to calculate. Calculate the mean of the squared values to get the variance.Square the resulting values (to cancel out negative numbers).Take every value in your set and subtract it from the mean.To calculate the mean, take the sum of all the values divided by the number of values. Calculate the mean of a set of values.

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