Question

As an airline pilot, you strive forarrivals that are as close as possible toon-time. When measuring on-timearrivals based on minutes late, do youwant a higher or lower standarddeviation?LowerHigher

Answer 1

The standard deviation measures how far the data are from the dataset mean. The lower the standard deviation is, the closest the data are to the mean.

In this case, the pilot strives for a mean equal to 0 (zero minutes late). Also, since the pilot needs the arrivals to be as close as possible to this mean of zero minutes late (on-time), they want the data of "minutes late" to be all close to this mean. And this is achieved with a lower standard deviation.

Therefore, they want a lower standard deviation.