Standard Deviation and Variance
Deviation just means how far from the normal
The Standard Deviation is a measure of how spread out numbers are.
Its symbol is σ (the greek letter sigma)
The formula is easy: it is the square root of the Variance. So now you ask, "What is the Variance?"
Variance
The Variance is defined as:
The average of the squared differences from the Mean.
To calculate the variance follow these steps:
Example
You and your friends have just measured the heights of your dogs (in millimeters):
The heights (at the shoulders) are: 600mm, 470mm, 170mm, 430mm and 300mm.
Find out the Mean, the Variance, and the Standard Deviation.
Your first step is to find the Mean:
Answer:
Mean = 600 + 470 + 170 + 430 + 3005 = 19705 = 394
so the mean (average) height is 394 mm. Let's plot this on the chart:
Now we calculate each dog's difference from the Mean:
To calculate the Variance, take each difference, square it, and then average the result:
So the Variance is 21,704
And the Standard Deviation is just the square root of Variance, so:
| Standard Deviation | |
| σ | = √21,704 |
| = 147.32... | |
| = 147 (to the nearest mm) | |
And the good thing about the Standard Deviation is that it is useful. Now we can show which heights are within one Standard Deviation (147mm) of the Mean:
So, using the Standard Deviation we have a "standard" way of knowing what is normal, and what is extra large or extra small.
Rottweilers are tall dogs. And Dachshunds are a bit short ... but don't tell them!
Now try the Standard Deviation Calculator.
But ... there is a small change with Sample Data
Our example has been for a Population (the 5 dogs are the only dogs we are interested in).
But if the data is a Sample (a selection taken from a bigger Population), then the calculation changes!
When you have "N" data values that are:
All other calculations stay the same, including how we calculated the mean.
Example: if our 5 dogs are just a sample of a bigger population of dogs, we divide by 4 instead of 5 like this:
Sample Variance = 108,520 / 4 = 27,130
Sample Standard Deviation = √27,130 = 164 (to the nearest mm)
Think of it as a "correction" when your data is only a sample.
Formulas
Here are the two formulas, explained at Standard Deviation Formulas if you want to know more:
Looks complicated, but the important change is to
divide by N-1 (instead of N) when calculating a Sample Variance.
*Footnote: Why square the differences?
If we just add up the differences from the mean ... the negatives cancel the positives:
So that won't work. How about we use absolute values?
That looks good (and is the Mean Deviation), but what about this case:
Oh No! It also gives a value of 4, Even though the differences are more spread out.
So let us try squaring each difference (and taking the square root at the end):
That is nice! The Standard Deviation is bigger when the differences are more spread out ... just what we want.
In fact this method is a similar idea to distance between points, just applied in a different way.
And it is easier to use algebra on squares and square roots than absolute values, which makes the standard deviation easy to use in other areas of mathematics.
