Standard deviation

High school (ages 12+)
Mathematics & Numbers

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/standard-deviation

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the statistical measure?Quantifies the dispersion or spread of a probability distribution or a dataset
2. What is the relationship to variance?Standard deviation is the square root of the variance
3. Why do we use standard deviation instead of just the mean?The mean tells us the middle value, but it doesn't show how much the numbers differ. Standard deviation tells us how consistent or variable the numbers are. It helps us understand uncertainty.
4. How do we calculate standard deviation for a whole group of numbers?First find the mean. Then for each number, subtract the mean and square the difference. Average those squared differences to get the variance. Finally, take the square root of the variance to get the standard deviation.

Population Variance: The average of the squared differences from the population mean (σ²).
Sample Variance: An estimate of population variance using sample data, dividing by n-1.
Inferential Statistics: Using sample data to make generalizations and draw conclusions about a larger population.