Generally not without further reason. Extreme values are often called outliers. Eliminating unusually high values will lower the standard deviation. You may want to calculate standard deviations with and without the extreme values to identify their impact on calculations. See related link for additional discussion.
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The reason the standard deviation of a distribution of means is smaller than the standard deviation of the population from which it was derived is actually quite logical. Keep in mind that standard deviation is the square root of variance. Variance is quite simply an expression of the variation among values in the population. Each of the means within the distribution of means is comprised of a sample of values taken randomly from the population. While it is possible for a random sample of multiple values to have come from one extreme or the other of the population distribution, it is unlikely. Generally, each sample will consist of some values on the lower end of the distribution, some from the higher end, and most from near the middle. In most cases, the values (both extremes and middle values) within each sample will balance out and average out to somewhere toward the middle of the population distribution. So the mean of each sample is likely to be close to the mean of the population and unlikely to be extreme in either direction. Because the majority of the means in a distribution of means will fall closer to the population mean than many of the individual values in the population, there is less variation among the distribution of means than among individual values in the population from which it was derived. Because there is less variation, the variance is lower, and thus, the square root of the variance - the standard deviation of the distribution of means - is less than the standard deviation of the population from which it was derived.
Because the standard deviation is based on the square root of the sum of the squares of the deviations, and, as a result, the sum of the squares of the deviations puts more weight in outliers than does a simple arithmetic mean.Note: I wrote this and then had second thoughts, but I'm keeping it in so that someone with more knowledge can weigh in (pun intended). I'm not certain how the arithmetic mean factors into the question. I think the questioner, and definitely this answerer, is confused.
It depends entirely on the variance (or standard error).
The advantage of range in a set of data is that it provides a simple measure of the spread or dispersion of the values. It is easy to calculate by subtracting the minimum value from the maximum value. However, the disadvantage of range is that it is heavily influenced by outliers, as it only considers the two extreme values and may not accurately represent the variability of the entire dataset. For a more robust measure of dispersion, other statistical measures such as standard deviation or interquartile range may be more appropriate.
The z-score is used to convert a variable with a Gaussian [Normal] distribution with mean m and standard error s to a variable with a standard normal distribution. Since the latter is tabulated, the probability of an outcome as extreme or more compared to the one observed is easily obtained.