Variance
A statistical measure of how spread out a set of numbers is from their average.
Variance is the average of squared differences from the mean. If a dataset is {2, 4, 6, 8, 10}, the mean is 6, and the variance is [(2-6)² + (4-6)² + (6-6)² + (8-6)² + (10-6)²] / 5 = 8. Standard deviation is the square root of variance (√8 ≈ 2.83). Variance is used in finance to measure investment risk — higher variance means more unpredictable returns.
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