how to find standard deviation?

Question

Which of the following highest Standard deviation
7, - 7, 7,-7, 7,-7 b) 7, 7, 7,7,7,7 c) -7, - 7, -7,-7,-7,-7 d) -7, 7, -7, 7,-7, 7.
how to find answer to this question?

Answer 1

Standard deviation measures the "average" distance each value is from the mean. So the more spread out a data set is, the larger the standard deviation is.

Lists b and c both have standard deviations of 0 because there is no variation from the mean in either list.

The first list (I'm assuming that this is list a)) and d) would have the same standard deviation, since both lists are the same numbers, just in different order. Both would also have sd's larger than 0 since the numbers are different from each other. So both a) and d) have the same standard deviation.

Answer 2

a.

Enter the data in excel and use the stdev() function...assuming you don't want to work out the calculations yourself.