Excel 2000 in a Nutshell

Name

VAR

Synopsis

Use VAR to find the variance in a list of numeric values based on a sample. If any of the values specified contain text or logical values, those values are ignored.

To Calculate

=VAR(Number1, Number2, ...)

There must be at least one Number argument specified for this function.

Example

Figure 15-50 illustrates how to use VAR to find the variance of a list of numbers. You will notice that the list of values that are specified contains two logical values in cells A5 and A7. The function ignores these values because they are not numbers. To include logical values in the variance, you need to use the VARA function.

The example also shows how the VARP and VARPA functions to determine the variance for the entire population.

Figure 15-50. Select one of the variance functions to determine the variance value for a list of values