I'm sorry, but I am asking this question again because the response I received was a question that I could not answer - that's why I am asking here. Thank you.
If someone asked: what can we learn from analyzing the standard deviation of a set of data that we couldn't learn from just looking at the measures of average, how would I answer?
I know that average is the value or number in the middle of the data set and standard deviation is how far the data is spread out. So why is that important to know?
1 answer
Because it tells you how unpredictable a given sample might be. If you look at ages of children the average might be 10. If they are all in grade five they might all be pretty close to five. However if they are in classes from kindergarten to high school sophmores they might have the same average but be far less predictable :)