Expressing “with a higher variance” as an adjective

Is it possible to express

has a higher variance

in the sentence

Dataset A has a higher variance than dataset B

as an adjective? Would

Dataset A is more variable than dataset B

be the right choice?

Answer

The common way of saying this is to use the word variant:

1 : manifesting variety, deviation, or disagreement
2 : varying usually slightly from the standard form
// variant readings
// variant spellings

So, in your case, you would say:

Dataset A is more variant than dataset B.


Generally, a comparison needs to be made to something else. So, in this case, dataset A is more variant than dataset B when it comes to some statistical norm.

For a more explicit statement, you could say something like this:

In comparison to the norm, dataset A is more variant than dataset B.


If you’re talking about the elements within a dataset, then you are comparing them to each other. In that case, you could use variance if you rephrased your sentence slightly:

The elements of dataset A show more variance than those of dataset B.

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : user1934212 , Answer Author : Jason Bassford

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