VAR

 

This function calculates the sample population variance of a list of values.
A sample population is used when the list of values represents a sample of a population.

Syntax

=VAR(Range1,Range2,Range3 through to Range30)

Formatting

No special formatting is needed.

Example

The table below was used by a company interested in buying a new machine
to pack washing powder.

Three machines were short listed and allow to run for a day.
At the end of the day four boxes of soap powder were picked at random from the production
of each machine.

The boxes were weighed and the =VAR() function used as these boxes only represented
a sample of the complete days production.

The machine with the smallest variance was the most consistent.

This finds the lowest value. =MIN(H34:H36)
This finds the position of the lowest value. =MATCH(MIN(H34:H36),H34:H36,0)
This looks down the Machine column to =INDEX(C34:C36,MATCH(MIN(H34:H36),H34:H36,0))
find the machine name.