Question

Describe in your own words what standard deviation is and what it can tell you about data. As a nurse how might you use the standard deviation to better help your patients? Remember to respond to yours classmates as well.

Answer 1

• Standard deviation is simply a measure of dispersion. It tells us how our data is distributed around mean or we can say that how our sample values are dispersed around mean.
• let is sample of size n having mean ' M ' then standard devaition is defined as

standard deviation = (variance)^0.5

• In nursuing , nurse generally measures sugar level or blood pressure level of patient as they know that average sugar level of healthy person lies between 80-120 as if they measure sugar level and it fluctuate too much about mean or we can say standard deviation is too much then it indicates that the patient have some issue related to his/her health. In such case nurse immidiately reports to the doctors so that they can have look over the problem of patient.