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Basic Question 1 of 23
A sample was taken of the salaries of 4 employees from a large company. The following are their salaries (in thousands of dollars) for this year: 33, 31, 24, 36. The variance of their salaries is ______.
User Contributed Comments 16
| User | Comment |
|---|---|
| kaliokale | This is the sample variance not the population variance |
| willeen | what number is m in the explanation above? thanks! F |
| Cooltallgal | m is 4 in this case as it stands for the 4 employee's salaries. |
| bwbarksdale | remember that the sample variance divides by "1" less than the population variance in order to achieve an "unbiased" measure of dispersion. |
| janetse | What are the steps in BAII? |
| JimM | Steps in BAII: 1) 2nd - DATA 2) enter the four data points as X values, leaving Y values alone (defaults to 1.0000) 3) 2nd - STAT 4) down arrow to read Sx (5.0990) 5) Variance is square of Sx, so hit x^2 button (26.0000) |
| albert2008 | Thanks for the calc instructions!!! |
| JanLani | Yeah, the calculator trick is greatly appreciated. |
| morek | Anyone know instructions for HP12C? Thanks. |
| czim | HP12c ; enter the data values using E+ in the stats function. Then key g s Enter to give you the standard deviation of the sample. simply square this to get sample variance. |
| tschorsch | for HP12c f Σ i.e. f SST clears stat data 33 Σ+ 31 Σ+ 24 Σ+ 36 Σ+ g s i.e g . g x² or enter x |
| DonAnd | Thanks for the steps using BA11. These are one set of formulas that I made sure that I knew well so I just use the formula but the calculator steps will definitely save me some time. |
| harpalani | Guys, can someone please explain the logic of reducing 1 from number of samples for calculating sample variance. How does the sample variance become biased when sample size is not reduced by 1? |
| ThomasDess | Steps in BAII' - cf JimM post 3) 2nd - Stat 3') 2nd - SET - press repeatedley until the CALCULATION METHOD you want is displayed; for one-variable data set 1-V; !! - for this case we would find the same results for Sx for Lin and Exp methods but not for Ln and PWR 4) down arrow to read Sx etc |
| thekobe | very important to put attention at the word "sample" |
| 2014 | Thanks Jim |
You have a wonderful website and definitely should take some credit for your members' outstanding grades.
Colin Sampaleanu
Learning Outcome Statements
calculate and interpret the mean, variance, and covariance (or correlation) of asset returns based on historical data
calculate and interpret portfolio standard deviation
describe the effect on a portfolio's risk of investing in assets that are less than perfectly correlated
CFA® 2025 Level I Curriculum, Volume 2, Module 1.