Cost and schedule variance data are part of earned value analysis, which is a tool that small and large businesses use as an early-warning system to identify and manage problems in ongoing projects.

Daniel Jassy, CFA, is an Investopedia Academy instructor and the founder of SPYderCRusher Research. He contributes to Excel and Algorithmic Trading. David Kindness is a Certified Public Accountant ...

A good tool to ask the right questions. A company's planned budget at the beginning of the year will always end up being different from how the year actually plays out. It's just impossible to predict ...

A stock's historical variance measures the difference between the stock's returns for different periods and its average return. A stock with a lower variance typically generates returns that are ...

Variance is a statistical calculation that numerically describes the amount of variation in a data set. If values in a data set wildly fluctuate, variance would be high and predictions based on the ...

Discover how to accurately calculate beta in Excel, understand its importance in finance, and ensure consistency by choosing the correct time periods for data analysis.