Vara, 300 vara – Apple iWork '09 User Manual

Page 300

“Listing of Statistical Functions” on page 225

“Using the Keyboard and Mouse to Create and Edit Formulas” on page 26

“Pasting from Examples in Help” on page 41

VARA

The VARA function returns the sample (unbiased) variance, a measure of dispersion, of
a collection of values, including text and Boolean values.

VARA(value, value…)

value: A value. value can contain any value type.

value…: Optionally include one or more additional values. All numeric values must
be of the same type. You cannot mix numbers, dates, and duration values.

Usage Notes

The VARA function finds the sample (unbiased) variance by dividing the sum of the

squares of the deviations of the data points by one less than the number of values.
It is appropriate to use VARA when the specified values represent only a sample of

a larger population. If the values you are analyzing represent the entire collection or
population, use the VARPA function.
VARA assigns a value of 0 to any text value, 0 to the Boolean value FALSE, and 1

to the Boolean value TRUE and includes them in the computation. Empty cells are
ignored. If you do not want to include text or Boolean values in the computation,
use the VAR function.
The square root of the variance returned by the VARA function is returned by the

STDEVA function.

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Chapter 10

Statistical Functions