What is variance in statistics?

What is variance in statistics?

Variance is a measure of how much values in a dataset differ from the mean. It quantifies the spread of the data.

How is variance calculated?

Variance is calculated by taking the average of the squared differences from the mean. The formula is: ( \sigma^2 = \frac{\sum (x_i - \mu)^2}{N} ) for population variance.

What does a high variance indicate?

A high variance indicates that the data points are spread out over a wider range of values, meaning there is more variability.

Can you give an example of variance in a real-world scenario?

Sure! In a class of students' test scores, if most scores are close to the average, the variance is low. If scores vary widely, the variance is high.