In your response postings, evaluate the worksheet of other students, discuss the calculations, and provide
helpful tips on using Excel to accomplish this descriptive statistic.
Variance and standard deviation are both very useful for analyzing data sets. According to Anderson (2021),
variance measures how much each value differs from the mean, and standard deviation measures how much a
data set is spread out. To find the variance, you must determine the mean of a data set and then calculate the
difference between each value and the mean. Next, you take the square of each value and then add all the
values together. Finally, divide that answer by one less than the number of points in the data set. Standard
deviation is determined by finding the square root of the variance (Anderson, 2021). While it seems
complicated to determine the variance and the standard deviation, they are very important calculations.
Using the data for Exam Testing, Test Minute Study Time, I calculated a variance of 3202.583 and a standard
deviation of 56.591 minutes. Please see a screenshot of my spreadsheet, and I have also attached a photo of
my worksheet for manual calculations.