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Both variance and standard deviation are measures of dispersion or variability in a set of data. They both measure how far the observations are scattered away from the mean (or average). While computing the variance, you compute the deviation of each observation from the mean, square it and sum all of the squared deviations. This somewhat exaggerates the true picure because the numbers become large when you square them. So, we take the square root of the variance (to compensate for the excess) and this is known as the standard deviation. This is why the standard deviation is more often used than variance but the standard deviation is just the square root of the variance.

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Q: Why standard deviation is more often used than variance?
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Why variance is bigger than standard deviation?

The variance is standard deviation squared, or, in other terms, the standard deviation is the square root of the variance. In many cases, this means that the variance is bigger than the standard deviation - but not always, it depends on the specific values.


The mean of A is 14 with a standard deviation of 4.2. The mean of B is 16 with a standard deviation of 4.4 Which is more dispersed?

B because the spread, in this case standard deviation, is larger.


What a large standard deviation means?

A large standard deviation means that the data were spread out. It is relative whether or not you consider a standard deviation to be "large" or not, but a larger standard deviation always means that the data is more spread out than a smaller one. For example, if the mean was 60, and the standard deviation was 1, then this is a small standard deviation. The data is not spread out and a score of 74 or 43 would be highly unlikely, almost impossible. However, if the mean was 60 and the standard deviation was 20, then this would be a large standard deviation. The data is spread out more and a score of 74 or 43 wouldn't be odd or unusual at all.


What is an acceptable standard deviation?

An acceptable standard deviation depends entirely on the study and person asking for the study. The smaller the standard deviation, the more acceptable it will be because the less likely there are to be errors.


How is standard deviation different from mean absolute decation?

If I have understood the question correctly, despite your challenging spelling, the standard deviation is the square root of the average of the squared deviations while the mean absolute deviation is the average of the deviation. One consequence of this difference is that a large deviation affects the standard deviation more than it affects the mean absolute deviation.