You can use the VAR, VAR.S or VARA functions to calculate sample variance.
Data Example
We are going to use the following sample of 6 students with math scores.
![Data Example of Sample Variance](https://tidystat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/image-15.png)
The following is how the data looks in Excel.
![Data Example in Excel](https://tidystat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/image-18.png)
Example of Var()
Thus, you can type =VAR(B2:B7) at E2 to calculate sample variance. You can type it anywhere other than E2 as long as it is not in the original data cells.
![Example of using var() to calcualte sample variance in Excel](https://tidystat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/image-16.png)
Example of VAR.S()
You can also type =VAR.S(B2:B7) at E2 to calculate sample variance. As expected, it gets 37.87 as well.
![Example of using var.s() to calcualte sample variance in Excel](https://tidystat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/image-19.png)
Example of VARA()
Finally, you can use =VARA(B2:B7) to calculate sample variance as well. The result is the same.
![Example of using vara() to calcualte sample variance in Excel](https://tidystat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/image-20.png)