mpy.ufunc.reduce` for details. .. versionadded:: 1.20.0 Returns ------- variance : ndarray, see dtype parameter above If ``out=None``, returns a new array containing the variance; otherwise, a reference to the output array is returned. See Also -------- std, mean, nanmean, nanstd, nanvar :ref:`ufuncs-output-type` Notes ----- The variance is the average of the squared deviations from the mean, i.e., ``var = mean(x)``, where ``x = abs(a - a.mean())**2``. The mean is typically calculated as ``x.sum() / N``, where ``N = len(x)``. If, however, `ddof` is specified, the divisor ``N - ddof`` is used instead. In standard statistical practice, ``ddof=1`` provides an unbiased estimator of the variance of a hypothetical infinite population. ``ddof=0`` provides a maximum likelihood estimate of the variance for normally distributed variables. Note that for complex numbers, the absolute value is taken before squaring, so that the result is always real and nonnegative. For floating-point input, the variance is computed using the same precision the input has. Depending on the input data, this can cause the results to be inaccurate, especially for `float32` (see example below). Specifying a higher-accuracy accumulator using the ``dtype`` keyword can alleviate this issue. Examples -------- >>> a = np.array([[1, 2], [3, 4]]) >>> np.var(a) 1.25 >>> np.var(a, axis=0) array([1., 1.]) >>> np.var(a, axis=1) array([0.25, 0.25]) In single precision, var() can be inaccurate: >>> a = np.zeros((2, 512*512), dtype=np.float32) >>> a[0, :] = 1.0 >>> a[1, :] = 0.1 >>> np.var(a) 0.20250003 Computing the variance in float64 is more accurate: >>> np.var(a, dtype=np.float64) 0.20249999932944759 # may vary >>> ((1-0.55)**2 + (0.1-0.55)**2)/2 0.2025 Specifying a where argument: >>> a = np.array([[14, 8, 11, 10], [7, 9, 10, 11], [10, 15, 5, 10]]) >>> np.var(a) 6.833333333333333 # may vary >>> np.var(a, where=[[True], [True], [False]]) 4.0 r”