Final answer:
The standard deviation measures the spread of data in a normal or expected distribution, indicating how far individual data points are from the center of the distribution.
Step-by-step explanation:
The standard deviation is a measure of the spread of the data in a normal or expected distribution. It quantifies how far individual data points are from the center of the distribution, which is typically the mean value. A smaller standard deviation indicates that the data points are closer to the mean and have less variation, while a larger standard deviation signifies that the data points are more spread out from the mean and have more variation.
For example, let's consider a dataset of test scores where the mean score is 80 and the standard deviation is 5. This means that most of the scores in the dataset are around 80, with only a few scores deviating significantly from the mean. If we have another dataset with a mean score of 80 but a larger standard deviation of 15, the scores in this dataset are more spread out, indicating a greater variability in the data.