Anxiety can often make these related conditions worse, so talk with a mental health care professional if anxiety begins to interfere on a daily basis.
In probability theory and statistics, the variance of a random variable is a measure of its statistical dispersion, indicating how far from the expected value its values typically are. The variance of a real-valued random variable is its second central moment, and it also happens to be its second cumulant.
Variance is used in statistics for probability distribution. Since variance measures the variability (volatility) from an average or mean, and volatility is a measure of risk, the variance statistic can help determine the risk an investor might take on when purchasing a specific security.