Question

What is an example of when you might want a large standard deviation? That is, data that is more spread out?

Answer 1

See in a factory , we require all types of people from labourer to top official of management . They all possess different level of education , physical strength and salary .

So if plot graph according to education vs no. of people or salary vs no. of people we will get a spreaded graph and thus high standard deviation . and this is what we require . We require all types of people with pay scales according to the availability and skills . We require labour to carry out physical works , then we require engineers to look after them , then comes senior engineer and so on....

so here we require large standard deviation.