A variance is a statistical measure that describes how spread out a set of data is. It is calculated as the average of the squared differences from the mean. In other words, it is the sum of the squared deviations from the mean divided by the number of data points. Variance is commonly used in probability theory and statistics to determine the likelihood of certain events occurring. A smaller variance means the data points are closer to the mean, whereas a larger variance means the data points are more spread out.
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