Replaces the contents of the result variable with the sample variance of the input vector. If the keyword divn is present, VARIANCE replaces the contents of the result variable with the population variance of the input vector.

As an alternate to divn, you can use pop, which is more mnemonic of the fact that it forces calculation of the "population variance".

Missing values, represented by "NaN" or ".", are ignored in the computation of the variance.

Usage with the LET command

You can use VARIANCE as a function in the LET command. By default, it will compute the sample variance. If you want to use it to compute the population variance, use the name VARIANCE_POP, which is only valid within a LET command.

COPY (75 60 82 95 88 79 69 74 89) grades
VARIANCE divn grades variance
PRINT  variance

The above program produced the following result:

variance: 105.33333333333333

The next program shows the relationship between the variance and the standard deviation. Variance is the square of the standard deviation.

NORMAL 1000 50 20 data
STDEV  data stddev
VARIANCE data variance
PRINT stddev variance

The above program produced the following result on one run:

stddev: 19.977625049460396
variance: 399.10550261682744