The square root of the variance returned by the VARPA function is returned by the STDEVPA function.
Example
Suppose you installed a temperature sensor in Cupertino, California. The sensor records each day’s high and low temperatures. The data from the first few days of July is shown in the following table and is used as a sample for the population of high and low temperatures (note that this is an example only; this would not be statistically valid). On 5 July, the sensor failed, so the data in the table shows n/a, or not available.
A
B
C
1
Date
High
Low
2
01/07/10
58
3
02/07/10
84
61
4
03/07/10
82
59
5
04/07/10
78
55
6
05/07/10
n/a
7
06/07/10
81
57
8
07/07/10
93
67
=VARPA(B2:B8) returns approximately 867.142857142857, the dispersion (variance is a measure of dispersion) as measured by VARPA, of the sample of daily high temperatures.
It exceeds the actual range of high temperatures because the "n/a" temperature is given a value of 0. If you had a large data set that could not easily be visually scanned, or you wished to automate checking for missing values, you could compare the results of =VARP(B2:B8), which returns approximately 112.5555555555556, and VARPA, which returns approximately 867.142857142857. If (as in this case) they are not equal, it would indicate the data set contains text (such as "n/a"), or one or more boolean values (TRUE or FALSE).