How to Use Excel's VARA Function

By eHow Computers Editor

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Excel's VARA function estimates the variance of a population based on a sample and returns the compound variance of that sample. This function is identical to VAR except that VARA accepts errors, logical values and text. The following steps will show how to use Excel's VARA function.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Step1

Learn the syntax for VARA. It is VARA(value1,value2,…) where value1, value2,… are up to 30 values to represent a population sample.

Step2

Study the valid argument types for the VARA function. They may be any of the following types: names, numbers, logical values or text representations of numbers. Text that cannot be translated into numbers will cause an error.

Step3

Names can be in the form of arrays or references that contain numbers. In this case, only values in that array or reference that can be translated into numbers will be used. Empty cells and text values will be ignored.

Step4

Enter logical values and text representations of numbers directly into the argument list, if desired. Logical values can also be references that are equivalent to TRUE or FALSE. Arguments containing TRUE evaluate as 1 and arguments containing FALSE or text evaluate as 0. Use the VAR function if you do not wish to include logical values or text representations of numbers in the calculation.

Step5

Calculate the VARA as the sum of (value – AVERAGE(value1,value2,…))^2/(n-1) where value is each value in the population sample and n is the size of the population sample. For example, VARA(1,2,3,4,5) = 3.5.