Measures of Dispersion/

Variability
(2) Variance
What is Variance?
This measure of dispersion checks the
spread of the data about the mean.
It is the average squared deviation from the
mean of the given data set.
How to compute for it?
1. Calculate for the mean of the data
set.
2. Deduct the mean from each data
in the set.
3. Square each of them and add each
square.
4. Finally, divide the sum by either
the total no. of values in the data
set for population variance, or the
total no. of values in the data set
less one (1) for sample variance.
Sample Illustration
The following data refers to the respondents’ number of years in service to the organization.
Advantages and Disadvantages
 Statisticians use variance to see how
individual numbers relate to each other
within a data set, rather than using
broader mathematical techniques such
as arranging numbers into quartiles.
 It treats all deviations from the mean as
the same regardless of their direction.
The squared deviations cannot sum to
zero and give the appearance of no
variability at all in the data.
 One drawback to variance, though, is
that it gives added weight to outliers.
These are the numbers far from the
mean. Squaring these numbers can
skew the data.
 Another pitfall of using variance is
that it is not easily interpreted.
Users often employ it primarily to
take the square root of its value,
which indicates the standard
deviation of the data.
Thank you for listening!