RelVar

Descriptive statistic to characterize & compare data sets.

Description

Whereas standard deviation and variance are measures of absolute variance, the coefficient of variation is a measure of relative variance. This is generally useful to compare several data sets. It can also be used as a simple quality indicator. The definition used here is ratio of standard deviation to mean value expressed as percentage. For more information on descriptive statistics, check out the online documentation for the Statistics Toolbox at http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/toolbox/stats/descript.shtml.

This is just a one-line utility but I use it often because it's convenient - saves typing.

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 6.5 (R13)

[Ronald Van Steenweghen]

As used with time series, not surprisingly a NaN enters the dataset. Therefore I suggest to use the replace this line of code by:

cv = nanstd(x(:))/nanmean(x(:))*100;

This will return a result even if NaN's are included into the dataset.