Applied Mathematics · Ch 10 — Descriptive Statistics
Standard Deviation (SD)
10.7.1
Standard Deviation (SD)
The standard deviation is the most powerful and widely used measure of spread in statistics. While the range and quartile deviations only look at specific data points, the standard deviation captures how far, on average, every single observation deviates from the mean. It answers the question: "If the mean is the center, how much do the data points typically wobble away from it?" A small standard deviation tells you the data is cluste …