Final answer:
To find the mean of a distribution, add up all the values and divide by the number of values. The variance is the average of the squared differences between each value and the mean. The standard deviation is the square root of the variance.
Step-by-step explanation:
To find the mean of a distribution, you need to add up all the values in the distribution and divide the sum by the number of values. The variance is calculated by finding the average of the squared differences between each value and the mean. The standard deviation is the square root of the variance.
For example, if you have a distribution of values: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, you would find the mean by adding them up (5+6+7+8+9 = 35) and dividing by the number of values (35/5 = 7). The variance would be calculated by finding the squared differences of each value from the mean [(5-7)^2 + (6-7)^2 + (7-7)^2 + (8-7)^2 + (9-7)^2 = 6] and dividing by the number of values (6/5 = 1.2). The standard deviation would be the square root of the variance (√1.2 = 1.095).