Standard Deviations Explained
June 28, 2010
If you read a lot but aren’t much into math you’ve probably heard the term standard deviation > being tossed around, but didn’t know what it meant exactly.
A standard deviation is a way to describe where someone (or something) falls on a scale, and, more specifically, how wide the range actually is. Bell curves are often presented when talking about standard deviations, as they capture the same idea visually.
The real question is, how far is a given measurement from the average for a group?
Some distributions are very high curves with little variation within the population, while others are short and wide.
Notes
1 [ Standard Deviation | Wikipedia > ]