Standard Deviation is?

Standard Deviation is?

• A. The distance between the highest and lowest score.
• B. The mean of squared deviations.
• C. The positive square root of the variance and provides a measure of the average distance from the mean.
• D. The number of standard deviations away from the mean.

Answer: (C)

Standard deviation is a measure of dispersion that tells you on average how far scores lie from the mean. It is the positive square root of the variance, which is the average of the squared deviations from the mean. Taking the square root brings the measure back to the same units as the data, making it easy to interpret how spread out the scores are around the mean. This is why the standard deviation is described as the positive square root of the variance and as a measure of the average distance from the mean. The other descriptions refer to different concepts: the range is the span between the highest and lowest scores, the variance is the mean of squared deviations, and a z-score indicates how many standard deviations a particular score is from the mean, not the standard deviation itself.

Standard deviation is a measure of dispersion that tells you on average how far scores lie from the mean. It is the positive square root of the variance, which is the average of the squared deviations from the mean. Taking the square root brings the measure back to the same units as the data, making it easy to interpret how spread out the scores are around the mean. This is why the standard deviation is described as the positive square root of the variance and as a measure of the average distance from the mean. The other descriptions refer to different concepts: the range is the span between the highest and lowest scores, the variance is the mean of squared deviations, and a z-score indicates how many standard deviations a particular score is from the mean, not the standard deviation itself.