Question

When reporting averages, standard deviation is used as the uncertainty or error. Briefly explain why standard deviation is more important than the absolute uncertainty of the instrument when multiple measurements are involved.

Answer 1

Standard deviation (SD) measures the degree of variability or diversity among studied elements or variables. Standard deviation is based on the average mean of variables and tells us about how the data is distributed about the mean value.

Standard deviation is obtained by first getting the average of the given data. Once the average is obtained, it is then subtracted individually from the single data with the result being squared thereafter. Standard deviation can be further calculated by getting the square root of the summed up results of individually squared variables, which was divided by the number of variables presented in the given data.

When the resulting standard deviation is large, it indicates that the data points are far from the obtained average. But when the standard deviation is small, it is indicative that the given variables are close to the computed mean.