What Does A High Variance Mean

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What

A high variance indicates that the data points are very spread out from the mean, and from one another. Variance is the average of the squared distances from each point to the mean. The process of finding the variance is very similar to finding the MAD, mean absolute deviation.

What does a high/low standard deviation mean in real terms?

  • A favorable variance indicates that a business has either generated more revenue than expected or incurred fewer expenses than expected. For an expense, this is the excess of a standard or budgeted amount over the actual amount incurred. When revenue is involved, a favorable variance is when t.
  • Standard Deviation and Variance. Deviation just means how far from the normal. Standard Deviation. The Standard Deviation is a measure of how spread out numbers are. Its symbol is σ (the greek letter sigma) The formula is easy: it is the square root of the Variance. So now you ask, 'What is the Variance?' The Variance is defined as.

High Variance D20

1 Answer

The higher the standard deviation the more variability or spread you have in your data.

Explanation:

Standard deviation measures how much your entire data set differs from the mean.

The larger your standard deviation, the more spread or variation in your data. Small standard deviations mean that most of your data is clustered around the mean.

Mean

In the following graph, the mean is 84.47, the standard deviation is 6.92 and the distribution looks like this:
Many of the test scores are around the average. There's one student who scored a 96, two students who scored 69, another two who scored 71, but most students scored close to somewhat close to the average of 84.47.

In this second graph, the mean is 80, the standard deviation is 14.57 , and the distribution looks like this:
There is greater variability in the test scores. One student scored a 24, which is pretty far from the average test score of 80. Another student scored a 45, which also isn't close to 80.

Sample Variance Calculator

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