Ask A Scientist© Zoology Archive

name      Babu
status    other
age       20s

Question - Hi,
What do you mean by Population Standard Deviation?

http://146.139.100.40/webpages/newton/askasci/1993/math/math014.htm


I believe you are referring to the above address?

Let me refer to the explaining given at this address.

http://146.139.100.40/webpages/askasci/gen99/gen99404.htm

Steve
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Population standard deviation, in a statistical sense, deals with the amount
of variation one would expect to see in a population, for some given
attribute. To determine the actual standard deviation for a population, you
would have to sample each individual member of a population for the specific
trait you are investigating. Naturally, this would be a timely and
expensive process. Instead, we make approximations of a population's
standard deviation by sampling that population and then making predictions
about the population , based upon the sample, but recognizing there is some
amount of inherent error in our prediction. We can reduce the inherent
error by increasing the sample size, but we never really can arrive at the
actual population standard deviation without sampling the entire population.
For normal circumstances, our approximation of the population standard
deviation serves our purposes.

Thanks for using NEWTON!

Ric Rupnik
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