Standard Deviation to Truly Understand the Meaning Essay

Standard Deviation

To truly understand the meaning of the concept "standard deviation," it is important to first look and examine the words themselves. "Deviation" is a word that explains normalcy and conformity. It is used to explain and highlight differences and similarities by demonstrating there is a difference in the two or more things being compared. Deviant behavior, for example characterizes actions that are not accepted in mainstream or centered belief models.

Standards are simply divisions or units. Often times standards are viewed in a hierarchical standpoint, where some people have higher standards than others. When standard deviation is explained in this piecemeal fashion, the term could be understood as simply how far something has drifted away from an accepted standpoint of understanding or quantity.

The statistical application of this term is quite useful, but difficult to explain in plain language.This is why abstract ideas such as mathematical formulas are used to help bridge this gap and create a model that can actually be grasped by the human mind and eventually blended with reason to create a useful and practical tool that can help develop even better predictive models that can assist a society or environment in better ways.

The standard deviation formula contains Greek letters and high order mathematical symbols to help create a cohesive model that can be manipulated by calculation. The goal of the formula is to solve for ? (sigma) which aims to demonstrate how far a piece of data strays from the mean or average of a collected larger group of data. The….....