Serious Question... NOT! [what is standard deviation?]

Daio Kaji · Post by **Daio Kaji** » Mon Oct 27, 2003 1:48 am

i was curious as to what 'Standard Deviation' meant
it goes in everyone's main profile, but what is it/what does it stand for
there is no ergency in this request, it is simply to better my understanding of the site.

Warpwind · Post by **Warpwind** » Mon Oct 27, 2003 2:04 am

The average value (number) that a given set of data deviates (is greater or less than) the mean for that data set.

ie for this data set
1, 2, 3,

The mean is 2 and the standard deviation is 1

angelx03 · Post by **angelx03** » Mon Oct 27, 2003 9:54 am

Here's the formula of standard deviation:

I remember using that last year in AP Statistics. I miss high school.

Daio Kaji · Post by **Daio Kaji** » Tue Oct 28, 2003 1:24 am

kule, thnx people, that definately cleared it up for me, it almost seems foolish to not reailze what it was (that it was that simple)
i just thought it might have been fancy talk for sumthing else though

i had a weird thought were the website could actually scan ur posts and opinions and actually score how much you digress off of the subject at hand, lol, but that's pretty unrealistic... for now. DUN DUN DUNNNNN!! (dramatic sound)
click here for my profile to see my deviation while ur at it... and to dl (and opinion) my vids of course

..

)

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:44 pm

of course when the standard deviation is almost 5 times the mean and there are no negative values, it becomes meaningless to use mean and standard curve (the curve is very skewed towards low usefulness, and looks less and less like a normal curve). the median + interquartile ranges would be a better representation of the distribution of usefulnesses.

on the other hand, because the mean is greater than the median, displaying the mean is a better incentive for getting people who want to match the 'average' to write longer reviews.

Savia · Post by **Savia** » Tue Oct 28, 2003 5:48 pm

That is to say, it is a measure of how spread out things are. The smaller the standard deviation, the closer together the data is around the mean.

Daio Kaji · Post by **Daio Kaji** » Tue Oct 28, 2003 11:32 pm

Savia wrote:That is to say, it is a measure of how spread out things are. The smaller the standard deviation, the closer together the data is around the mean.

thanks everybody (especially Savia who put this in as plain english as it can get

)