How to Calculate Population Covariance with COVARIANCE.P

Use COVARIANCE.P when your data covers every member of a group — like every branch — to see how two measures move together.

You will learn to

• Calculate a population covariance
• See how changing units rescales covariance
• Find the covariance with an improvement measure

How it works

COVARIANCE.P(array1, array2) is the population covariance: the average product of paired deviations from the mean, dividing by n. Use it when the data contains every member of the group you are describing — all branches of a company, every product in a range — rather than a sample.

Because covariance carries the units of both variables, converting hours to days divides it by 8. That is why analysts usually move on to correlation for strength, while using covariance in formulas such as regression slopes and portfolio risk.

=COVARIANCE.P(B2:B10,D2:D10)