Jump to content

Documentation/Calc Functions/VARP

From The Document Foundation Wiki

Function name:

VARP

Category:

Statistical Analysis

Summary:

Calculates the population variance of a set of numbers.

Syntax:

VARP(Number 1[; Number 2[; ...[; Number 255]]])

Returns:

Returns a non-negative real number, which is the population variance of the supplied numbers.

Arguments:

Number 1, Number 2, ..., Number 255 give the set of real numbers for which the population variance is to be calculated. Each argument may be a value or an expression, a reference to a single cell, a reference to a cell range, the name of a named or database range, or an inline array.

Note that although VARP can accept up to 255 arguments, each argument could specify a range of cells. This means that the number of real numbers processed could be many more than 255.

The following conditions (including errors) may be encountered:

  • If any argument is a string in quotation marks, then VARP reports a parameter list error (Err:504).
  • Text in cells and empty cells are ignored.
  • If no numbers are supplied, then VARP reports a #DIV/0! error.
  • If only one number is supplied, then VARP returns 0.

Additional details:

  • Calc's VARP and VAR.P functions perform identical calculations. The requirements for VARP are specified in ODF 1.2; VAR.P is provided for interoperability with Microsoft Excel.
  • The formula for the population variance ([math]\displaystyle{ \sigma^2 }[/math]) is:
[math]\displaystyle{ \sigma^2\:=\:\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}(x_{i}-\mu)^2 }[/math]
where
  • [math]\displaystyle{ n }[/math] is the size of the population
  • [math]\displaystyle{ x_{i} }[/math] is the i-th value in the population
  • [math]\displaystyle{ \mu }[/math] is the population mean
  • For more information on variances, visit Wikipedia's Variance page.

Examples:

Formula Description Returns
=VARP(A1:A5) where cells A1:A5 contain the values 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Here the function calculates the population variance of the five values in the specified cells. 2
=VARP(3; 4; 5; 6; 2; 3; 1) Here the function calculates the population variance of the seven values passed as individual arguments. 2.53061224489796
=VARP({3, 4, -5, 6.05, 2, 3, -1.5}) Here the function calculates the population variance of the seven values passed in an inline array. 11.8278571428571

Related LibreOffice functions:

AVERAGE

AVERAGEA

STDEV

STDEV.P

STDEV.S

STDEVA

STDEVP

STDEVPA

VAR

VAR.P

VAR.S

VARA

VARPA

ODF standard:

Section 6.18.84, part 2

Related (or similar) Excel functions:

VARP