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Statistics for Decision- Making in Business - Maricopa Community ...

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them. However, observe that the sum of the deviations is 0! This is true of any dataset, s<strong>in</strong>ce the<br />

mean represents the “balance” of the dataset. Due to mathematical concerns that we won‟t state<br />

here, mathematicians decided to square these values, s<strong>in</strong>ce squar<strong>in</strong>g converts all signed numbers<br />

<strong>in</strong>to positive values.<br />

Value ̅ ( ̅)<br />

0 -17.875 319.5156<br />

1 -16.875 284.7656<br />

3 -14.875 221.2656<br />

10 -7.875 62.01563<br />

8 -9.875 97.51563<br />

7 -10.875 118.2656<br />

4 -13.875 192.5156<br />

110 92.125 8487.016<br />

Mean: 17.875 Sum: 9782.88<br />

Great, now they can be summed up to give 9782.88! Thus, we have found the follow<strong>in</strong>g:<br />

∑( ̅)<br />

One would th<strong>in</strong>k that divid<strong>in</strong>g by 8 would now be appropriate to f<strong>in</strong>d the average. Due to<br />

mathematical properties that are beyond the scope of this course, the division will be by 7, which<br />

is . Thus:<br />

∑( ̅)<br />

This value that we have found is called the variance.<br />

NOTE: The division by has to do with the fact that we are often deal<strong>in</strong>g with a sample <strong>in</strong><br />

<strong>in</strong>ferential statistics and hope to make conclusions above a population.<br />

Sample Variance<br />

The variance of a sample, an un<strong>in</strong>terpretable measure of variability denoted by<br />

by the follow<strong>in</strong>g <strong>for</strong>mula:<br />

, can be found<br />

∑( ̅)<br />

To make all of these calculations more mean<strong>in</strong>gful (to have a true average), we should probably<br />

“unsquare” the value that we have. When we do this, we get the sample standard deviation:<br />

<strong>Statistics</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Decision</strong>-<strong>Mak<strong>in</strong>g</strong> <strong>in</strong> Bus<strong>in</strong>ess © Milos Podmanik Page 68

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