Formulas and Functions

“Listing of Statistical Functions” on page 225
“Value Types” on page 36
“The Elements of Formulas” on page 15
“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 nds the sample (unbiased) variance by dividing the sum of the Â
squares of the deviations of the data points by one less than the number of values.
It is appropriate to use VARA when the specied values represent only a sample of Â
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 Â
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 Â
STDEVA function.
300 Chapter 10 Statistical Functions