Final answer:
The correct option is d). Jared is calculating the 'deviation from the mean,' which is the difference between his team's sales and the average sales of competitors. Quite often, these individual deviations are used to calculate the variance and standard deviation, the most common measures to understand data variability.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statistical concept that represents the difference between the number of sales made each month by Jared's team of realtors and the average number of sales made by similar brokers' offices is known as deviation from the mean. This concept involves comparing individual data points — in this case, the monthly sales numbers — to the average (mean) of a comparable group. The goal is to understand how the team's performance varies relative to the industry standard. When all of these individual deviations are squared and averaged, they result in the variance, and the square root of the variance gives us the standard deviation, which is a measure of the spread of the data around the mean. The mean deviation or average absolute deviation is another closely related concept that averages the absolute values of these deviations rather than squaring them.