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Variance

The standard deviation is a measure of how dispersed or spread out values are from the average (mean). It indicates whether values are close to the mean or fluctuate widely. A lower standard deviation means values are more consistent and close to the mean, making the mean more reliable. A higher standard deviation means values are more variable and dispersed, making the mean less reliable. The standard deviation is used in various fields like business to measure investment risk, with higher standard deviations indicating higher volatility.

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20 views

Variance

The standard deviation is a measure of how dispersed or spread out values are from the average (mean). It indicates whether values are close to the mean or fluctuate widely. A lower standard deviation means values are more consistent and close to the mean, making the mean more reliable. A higher standard deviation means values are more variable and dispersed, making the mean less reliable. The standard deviation is used in various fields like business to measure investment risk, with higher standard deviations indicating higher volatility.

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pieces zina
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is standard deviation?

The standard deviation is a measure that indicates how much the values of the set of data deviate
(spread out) from the mean. To put it differently, the standard deviation shows whether your data
is close to the mean or fluctuates a lot.

The purpose of the standard deviation is to help you understand if the mean really returns a
"typical" data. The closer the standard deviation is to zero, the lower the data variability and the
more reliable the mean is. The standard deviation equal to 0 indicates that every value in the
dataset is exactly equal to the mean. The higher the standard deviation, the more variation there
is in the data and the less accurate the mean is.

To get a better idea of how this works, please have a look at the following data:

For Biology, the standard deviation is 5 (rounded to an integer), which tells us that the majority of
scores are no more than 5 points away from the mean. Is that good? Well, yes, it indicates that the
Biology scores of the students are pretty consistent.

For Math, the standard deviation is 23. It shows that there is a huge dispersion (spread) in the
scores, meaning that some students performed much better and/or some performed far worse
than the average.

In practice, the standard deviation is often used by business analysists as a measure of investment
risk - the higher the standard deviation, the higher the volatility of the returns.

Sample standard deviation vs. Population standard deviation

In relation to standard deviation, you may often hear the terms "sample" and "population", which
refer to the completeness of the data you are working with. The main difference is as follows:

 Population includes all of the elements from a data set.


 Sample is a subset of data that includes one or more elements from the population.

Researchers and analysists operate on the standard deviation of a sample and population in
different situations. For example, when summarizing the exam scores of a class of students, a
teacher will use the population standard deviation. Statisticians calculating the national SAT
average score would use a sample standard deviation because they are presented with the data
from a sample only, not from the entire population.

Understanding the standard deviation formula


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Measures of dispersion are used to describe the variability or diversity in a set of scores. They can
be used to describe the:
•Variability in students’ grade point averages
•Diversity in life styles across different social settings
•Differences in age diversity in different communities
•Variations in income inequality across nations over time

What are the purposes of studying measures of dispersion?


While measures of central tendency are used to estimate "normal" values of a dataset,
measures of dispersion are important for describing the spread of the data, or its variation around
a central value.
Dispersion is a statistical term that describes the size of the distribution of values

expected for a particular variable. Dispersion can be measured by several different

statistics, such as range, variance, and standard deviation.

1 To find the average distance of the items from an average. 2 To know the structure of the series.
3 To gauge the reliability of an average. When the dispersion is small, the average is
reliable

The variance is the average of the squared deviations from the center (mean) of the
distribution; the standard deviation is the square root of the variance.

Q1 Two plants were installed by a certain copper wire factory on the same date and were in
operation under identical conditions their six months output of wire in thousands of yards
given as under. Find VARIANCE ( 150 , 8.33)

Month Production of Plant - I Production of Plant - II


January 10 20
February 30 25
March 10 25
April 30 25
May 45 30
June 25 25
Total 150 150
Q2 Lives of two models of refrigerators turned in for now models in a recent survey are. What
is the average life of each model of these refrigerators? Which model of refrigerator shows
more consistency in life

( 5.12 , 7.91 , 6.16 , 4.79 )

Life of Refrigerators in years 0-2 2-4 4-6 6-8 8 - 10 10 - 12 Total


Model A 5 16 13 7 5 4 50
Model B 2 7 12 19 9 1 50

Q3 The following table gives the distribution of the life time of 400 neon lamps:

Life time in hours 1500-2000 2000-2500 2500 - 3000 3000-3500 3500- 4000 4000- 4500 4500 - 5000
Number of lamps 14 56 60 86 74 62 48

VARIANCE = 701900

Q4 The following frequency distribution gives the monthly consumption of electricity of


68 consumers of a locality. Find the median, mean and mode of the data and compare
them. Find co efficient of variation and comments on results

Monthly consumption in units 65 - 85 85 – 105 105 - 125 125 - 145 145 - 165 165 – 185 185 - 205

Number of consumers 4 5 13 20 14 8 4

Meane = 134.12 Variance = 682 Std= 26.11 CV = 19.47%

Q5 The lengths of 40 leaves of a plant are measured correct to the nearest millimeter, and the
data obtained is represented in the following table:

Length in mm 118 - 126 127 - 135 136 - 144 145 - 153 154 - 162 163 - 171 172 - 180

Number of Leaves 3 5 9 12 5 4 2

Q6 A booklet has 12 pages with the following numbers of words:


271, 354, 296, 301, 333, 326, 285, 298, 327, 316, 287 and 314

What is the standard deviation number of words per page?

Q7 What is the variance of the first 10 numbers of the Fibonacci sequence {0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,
13, 21, 34}
Q 8 Find the variance for the heights of the top 12 buildings in London, England. The heights,
(in feet) are: 800, 720, 655, 655, 625, 600, 590, 529, 513, 502, 502, 502.

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