Wikipedia 10K Redux

Reconstructed by Reagle from Starling archive; see blog post for context.

MeaN

: back to CentralTendancy -- SummaryStatistics -- SummarizingStatisticalData

The mean is what we call the average in ordinary English, just the sum of all the observations divided by the number of observations. Once we have chosen this method of describing the communality of a DataSeT, we usually use the StandardDeviation to describe how the observations differ. The SD (as we abbreviate it) is the square root of the average of squared deviations from the mean.

The mean is the only value about which the sum of squared deviations is a minimum. If you calculate the sum of squared deviations from any other measure of Central Tendency, it will be larger than for the mean. This explains why the StandardDeviation and the mean are usually cited together in statistical reports.


RABeldin