How to Calculate Variance on Excel

A coach does more than just teach and motivate. A good coach also tracks her athletes’ progress. As you continue to seek new ways to help your athletes improve their performance, you’ll find that tracking their fluctuations can bring you valuable information. Calculating your athletes’ variance in performance is easy to do if you use an Excel spreadsheet.

Instructions

    • 1

      Open a new Excel spreadsheet and save it with an appropriate name. For this example, we’ll calculate the variance on a runner’s time over five different races.

    • 2

      Type the word “Race” in field A1 and the word “Time” in field B1.

    • 3

      Enter the number one, which stands for the first race, in field A2. Enter the runner’s time for that race in field B2.

    • 4

      Do the same for the other four races consecutively in each row so that the last race shows the number five in field A6 and the runner’s time for race number five in field B6.

    • 5

      Type the following into field B7: =DVARP(A1:B6,"Time",A1:A6). Press enter and you will see the resulting variance in your runner’s times.