Variance (land use)

Imagine you have a bunch of different toys that you like to play with. Sometimes you play with your building blocks, sometimes you play with your toy cars, and sometimes you play with your stuffed animals.

Now, let's pretend that the toys are like different kinds of land use. When we talk about variance in land use, we're talking about how much the different kinds of land use are mixed together.

So, if all your building blocks are in one place, and all your toy cars are in another place, and all your stuffed animals are in a third place, that's not very mixed up. That's like low variance in your toys.

But if you have some building blocks over here, some toy cars over there, and some stuffed animals in another corner, that's more mixed up. That's like higher variance in your toys.

The same thing happens with different kinds of land use. If all the houses are in one big group, and all the stores are in another big group, and all the factories are in a third big group, that's low variance in land use.

But if there's a mix of houses, stores, and factories all in the same area, that's higher variance in land use.

Variance is just a fancy word for how spread out things are. So if the different kinds of land use are all spread out and mixed together, that's high variance. And if they're all grouped together, that's low variance.