Final answer:
The portion of the variance calculation represented by (x-m)² is called the squared deviation from the mean.
Step-by-step explanation:
The portion of the variance calculation represented by (x-m)² is called the squared deviation from the mean.
In statistics, variance measures how spread out a set of data is from its mean. The squared deviation from the mean represents each data point's difference from the mean squared. Summing up all the squared deviations and dividing by the sample size minus one gives us the sample variance. The squared deviations' summation elucidates the variance, a crucial statistical metric revealing data distribution characteristics.