VAR.S DAX Function (Statistical)
Estimates variance based on a sample. Ignores logical values and text in the sample.
Syntax
| Parameter | Attributes | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ColumnName |
A column that contains numeric values corresponding to a sample of a population. |
Return values
A number that represents the variance of a sample population.
Remarks
VAR.S assumes that the column refers to a sample of the population.
To compute the variance with the entire population, use VAR.P.
The VAR.S function internally executes VARX.S, without any performance difference.
The following VAR.S call:
VAR.S ( table[column] )
corresponds to the following VARX.S call:
VARX.S (
table,
table[column]
)
» 3 related functions
Examples
-- Computes the variance over a table of values
--
-- VAR.P : variance over the entire population
-- VAR.S : variance over a sample of the entire population
--
-- VARX is an iterator, VAR is the simplified version in case
-- you are using a single column
DEFINE
TABLE SampleData = { 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9 }
EVALUATE
{
( "VAR.P", VAR.P ( SampleData[Value] ) ),
( "VAR.S", VAR.S ( SampleData[Value] ) ),
( "VARX.P", VARX.P ( SampleData, SampleData[Value] ) ),
( "VARX.S", VARX.S ( SampleData, SampleData[Value] ) ),
( "VARX.P", VARX.P ( Sales, Sales[Quantity] * Sales[Net Price] ) ),
( "VARX.S", VARX.S ( Sales, Sales[Quantity] * Sales[Net Price] ) )
}
-- The STDEV.S over SampleData is very different from STDEV.P because the
-- set is small (8 rows for the population, 8 rows for the sample)
-- When applied to Sales, the difference is smaller because
-- the set used has 100,000 rows
| Value1 | Value2 |
|---|---|
| VAR.P | 4.00 |
| VAR.S | 4.57 |
| VARX.P | 4.00 |
| VARX.S | 4.57 |
| VARX.P | 346,327.15 |
| VARX.S | 346,330.61 |
Related articles
Learn more about VAR.S in the following articles:
-
Statistical Patterns
IMPORTANT If you use Power BI, Analysis Services, or Excel 2016 or later versions, you can use the statistical functions in DAX. If you use Excel 2010 or Excel 2013, most of the DAX statistical functions are not available and you can rely on an alternative implementation based on DAX code as described in this page. DAX includes a few statistical aggregation functions, such as average, variance, and standard deviation. Other typical statistical calculations require you to write longer DAX expressions. Excel, from this point of view, has a much richer language. The Statistical Patterns are a collection of common […] » Read more
Related functions
Other related functions are:
Last update: Jul 2, 2025 » Contribute » Show contributors
Contributors: Alberto Ferrari, Marco Russo
Microsoft documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/var-s-function-dax