Can a data set with two or three numbers have a standard deviation?
1 Answer
Oct 29, 2015
Yes it can.
Explanation:
Yes. It is possible to calculate the standard deviation of any non empty set of numbers. However it would be difficult to interpret such value for such a small set of data.
Examples:
- A sigle number would have a deviation of zero:
Let
The mean
The standard deviation:
In this case
- Let
#A# be a set of 4 numbers:#A={2,3,5,8}#
The mean
The deviation would be: