Standard Deviation measures the spread around the average. In other words by how much is an element in data away or closer to the average.
What is a Standard Deviation ?
How does one find Standard Deviation ( SD ) ?
SD for any given data can be found in 3 simple steps:
- Find the Average of data
- Find its deviation from the Average
- Find the R.M.S of the deviations
Example sample A: 41, 48 , 50 , 50 , 54 , 57
- Find the average of sample A . Average = 300/6 = 50
- Find the deviation of each number in sample A from the Average ( 50 )
- 41 – 50 = -9
- 48 – 50 = -2 and so on to yield -9, -2 , 0 , 0, 4 ,7
- Find the Root Mean Square of list in step 2
- Square of all values 81 , 4 , 0 , 0, 14 , 49
- Average of values in above step 150/6 = 25.
- Root of the value got in step 2 , root(25) = 5.
5 is the SD for the sample list 41 , 48, 50, 50, 54, 57.
Standard Deviation is very important while calculating Coefficient of Correlation.Will be discussed in another post !
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