FUNCTION: VAR

SELECT VAR(field) AS [expression]
FROM table
[WHERE ...]
[GROUPBY ...]
[HAVING ...]

 
The VAR function is one of the aggregate functions that are used to calculate statistical information for a specified numeric field in a query. The other aggregate functions are: AVG, COUNT, MAX, MIN, STDEV, STDEVP, SUM, VARP. Note that all of these functions return a single value.
 
The VAR function finds the variance by using a portion, called a sample, of the total number of values in a field. This is a time saver when dealing with extremely large tables and can be shown to be statistically valid. In comparison, the VARP function uses all of the values to calculate the variance. There must be at least two values in the field or the variance will not be calculated and a NULL is returned.
 
This code finds the variance of the age of the MediCare patients in a hospital (by using a sample) and stores that information in VarAge.
 
SELECT VAR(Age) AS [VarAge]
FROM MediCarePatients


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