Better for what? Standard deviation is used for some calculatoins, variance for others.
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The standard deviation has the same measurement units as the variable and is, therefore, more easily comprehended.
I believe you are interested in calculating the variance from a set of data related to salaries. Variance = square of the standard deviation, where: s= square root[sum (xi- mean)2/(n-1)] where mean of the set is the sum of all data divided by the number in the sample. X of i is a single data point (single salary). If instead of a sample of data, you have the entire population of size N, substitute N for n-1 in the above equation. You may find more information on the interpretation of variance, by searching wikipedia under variance and standard deviation. I note that an advantage of using the standard deviation rather than variance, is because the standard deviation will be in the same units as the mean.
When you don't have the population standard deviation, but do have the sample standard deviation. The Z score will be better to do as long as it is possible to do it.
The 'standard deviation' in statistics or probability is a measure of how spread out the numbers are. It mathematical terms, it is the square root of the mean of the squared deviations of all the numbers in the data set from the mean of that set. It is approximately equal to the average deviation from the mean. If you have a set of values with low standard deviation, it means that in general, most of the values are close to the mean. A high standard deviation means that the values in general, differ a lot from the mean. The variance is the standard deviation squared. That is to say, the standard deviation is the square root of the variance. To calculate the variance, we simply take each number in the set and subtract it from the mean. Next square that value and do the same for each number in the set. Lastly, take the mean of all the squares. The mean of the squared deviation from the mean is the variance. The square root of the variance is the standard deviation. If you take the following data series for example, the mean for all of them is '3'. 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 all the values are 3, they're the same as the mean. The standard deviation is zero. This is because the difference from the mean is zero in each case, and after squaring and then taking the mean, the variance is zero. Last, the square root of zero is zero so the standard deviation is zero. Of note is that since you are squaring the deviations from the mean, the variance and hence the standard deviation can never be negative. 1, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5 - most of the values are the same as the mean. This has a low standard deviation. In this case, the standard deviation is very small since most of the difference from the mean are small. 1, 1, 1, 5, 5, 5 - all the values are two higher or two lower than the mean. This series has the highest standard deviation.
In general, a mean can be greater or less than the standard deviation.