noun · academic
variance
UK/ˈveəriəns/US/ˈveriəns/VA·ri·ance
a measure of how spread out a set of numbers is, calculated as the average squared deviation from the mean
Examples
“The variance in test scores was higher for the online group.”
“Researchers decomposed the total variance into within-group and between-group components.”
“A large variance indicates much diversity in the sample.”
Band 8 sentence
“The model accounted for 40% of the variance in reading scores, indicating substantial unexplained factors.”
Collocations
- variance explained
- between-group variance
Word family
Common mistakes
variation→variance
the variance are high→the variance is high
Say it for a higher band
5spread→6variation→7+variance
Synonyms
dispersion
Easily confused
standard deviation
“Standard deviation is often preferred in reports because it is in the same units as the original data.”
Related words
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In Science & Research
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