Formulas and Functions Help
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- Intro to formulas and functions
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VARP
The VARP function returns the population (true) variance — a measure of dispersion — of a set of numeric values.
VARP(value, value…)
value: A number value or date/time value or a collection of these value types. All values must be of the same value type and a minimum of two values are required.
value…: Optionally include one or more additional values or collections of values.
Notes
The VARP function finds the population, or true, variance (as opposed to the sample, or unbiased, variance) by dividing the sum of the squares of the deviations of the data points by the number of values.
It is appropriate to use VARP when the specified values represent the entire collection or population. If the values you are analysing represent only a sample of a larger population, use the VAR function.
The square root of the variance returned by the VARP function is returned by the STDEVP function.
Example |
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Suppose you administered five tests to your small class of five students. Using this population data, you could use the VARP function to determine which test had the widest dispersion of test scores. This might be useful in determining lesson plans, identifying potential problem questions or for other analysis. You enter the test scores into a blank table, with the scores for each student in columns A to E and the five students in rows 1 to 5. The table would appear as follows. |
| A | B | C | D | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 75 | 82 | 90 | 78 | 84 |
2 | 100 | 90 | 95 | 88 | 90 |
3 | 40 | 80 | 78 | 90 | 85 |
4 | 80 | 35 | 95 | 98 | 92 |
5 | 90 | 98 | 75 | 97 | 88 |
=VARP(A1:A5) returns approximately 416, the population variance of the results of Test 1. =VARP(B1:B5) returns approximately 481.6, the population variance of the results of Test 2. =VARP(C1:C5) returns approximately 72.24, the population variance of the results of Test 3. =VARP(D1:D5) returns approximately 52.16, the population variance of the results of Test 4. =VARP(E1:E5) returns approximately 8.96, the population variance of the results of Test 5. Test 2 had the highest dispersion (variance is a measure of dispersion), followed closely by Test 1. The other three tests had lower dispersion. |
Example — Survey results |
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To see an example of this and several other statistical functions applied to the results of a survey, see the COUNTIF function. |