COBOL Manual for TNS and TNS/R Programs

Intrinsic Functions

HP COBOL Manual for TNS and TNS/R Programs—522555-006

14-62

VARIANCE Function

VARIANCE, a numeric function, returns a value that approximates the variance of its

arguments.

argument

is a numeric argument.

argument can be an array; for example,

FUNCTION VARIANCE (ARRAY1(ALL))

returns a value that approximates the variance of the elements of the array

ARRAY1.

The returned value is the approximation of the variance of the argument series.

If there is only one argument, or if every argument is a variable occurrence data

item and the total number of occurrences for all of them is one, the returned value is

zero; otherwise, the returned value is the square of the standard deviation of the

argument series; that is:

( )

VARIANCEFUNCTION argument

VST466.vsd

argument

FUNCTION MEAN argument

… argument,

(, )–()

i 1=

∑

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