Can the variance be zero? - Answers

Variance is standard deviation squared. If standard deviation can be zero then the variance can obviously be zero because zero squared is still zero. The standard deviation is equal to the sum of the squares of each data point in your data set minus the mean, all that over n. The idea is that if all of your data points are the same then the mean will be the same as every data point. If the mean is the equal to every data point then the square of each point minus the mean would be zero. All of the squared values added up would still be zero. And zero divided by n is still zero. In this case the standard deviation would be zero. Short story short: if all of the points in a data set are equal than the variance will be zero. Yes the variance can be zero.