The formula for calculating variance uses simple arithmetic and involves only one number, which can be calculated using your calculator or in Excel, so there’s no reason to feel intimidated by it! In this post, we’ll go over exactly what variance means and how you can use it to calculate your own data sets. Variance (or standard deviation) is a measure of the dispersion of data around the mean, with lower variance indicating that the data points tend to be close to the mean and higher variance indicating that the data points are spread out over a larger range of values.
