Question
What is a measurement of how far each number in a data set is from the mean (average), and thus from every other number in the set?
Answers
GPT-4o mini
The measurement you are referring to is called the **standard deviation**. It quantifies the amount of variation or dispersion in a set of values. A low standard deviation indicates that the numbers tend to be close to the mean (average) of the set, while a high standard deviation indicates that the numbers are spread out over a wider range of values.
Another related concept is the **variance**, which is the average of the squared differences from the mean. While variance is also a measure of dispersion, standard deviation is often preferred because it is in the same units as the data, making it easier to interpret.
Another related concept is the **variance**, which is the average of the squared differences from the mean. While variance is also a measure of dispersion, standard deviation is often preferred because it is in the same units as the data, making it easier to interpret.