How to Use Excel's VARP Function

By eHow Computers Editor

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The Excel function VARP stands for "variance population" and calculates the variance of an entire population. The accuracy of VARP was improved in Excel 2003 and later versions. Earlier versions used a computational formula that had more profound effects from round-off errors. The following steps will show how to use Excel's VARP function.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Step1

Learn the syntax of VARP. It is VARP(number1,number2,…) where number1, number2,… are up to 30 arguments which evaluate to numbers and comprise a complete population. VARP requires at least one argument.

Step2

Use arrays, names or references that contain numbers as arguments for VARP, in addition to pure numbers. Only numbers in an array or reference will be counted. Empty cells, error values, logical values or text in an array or reference will be ignored.

Step3

Enter logical values and text that represents numbers directly into the argument list. Error values or text that does not evaluate to a number will cause an error.

Step4

Ensure VARP is the correct function to use. VAR should be used instead of VARP if the data represents only a population sample. Use the VARPA function instead if you wish to include a reference that contains logical values or numbers represented by text in the calculation.

Step5

Calculate the VARP as the sum of (number – AVERAGE(number1,number2,…))^2/n where number is each value in the population and n is the number of values in the population. For A2 = 3.5, A3 = 5, A4 = 7.23 and A5 = 2.99, VARP(A2,A3,A4,A5) would return 2.71335.