Abstract: An improved change-detection method and system that periodically evaluates differences between samples of a dataset in the context of the dataset's derived historic variability to notify a client of significant changes in the dataset. By parsing the dataset samples and comparing corresponding sections of the samples, the system identifies changed sections of the dataset. The changed sections are evaluated against the dataset's historic section variability, which is derived from an analysis of prior samples of the dataset. If the variability analysis indicates that a changed section is not historically prone to change, the system generates a change notification to a client. If the variability analysis indicates the section is prone to change, no notification is generated. Thus, the client does not receive notification of changes to sections of the dataset that are inherently prone to change.