Question

When calculating the standard deviation, what step needs to be done first?

1) Calculate the mean
2) Add up the variance
3) Square the absolute deviation
4) Subtract the mean from the data point

Answer 1

The first step when calculating the standard deviation is to calculate the mean of the data. Then, the deviations from the mean are squared.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the standard deviation, the first step is to calculate the mean of the data. The mean is the average of all the data points. After calculating the mean, the next step is to subtract the mean from each data point to get the deviation from the mean. Once you have the deviations, you square each deviation. Finally, add up all the squared deviations and divide by the number of data points to calculate the variance.