Question

Hello guys, I am doing some uni work and need to do some statistics using MiniTab. However, the program showed me that SD (standard deviation) is 888, it seems like a very large number, so maybe I did something wrongly? Thanks.

Answer 1

SD is a measure of variation. Without the data, I don't know how we can determine if the SD is too large. Perhaps, there was a wide variation in the data.

I don't do MiniTab but is there a way to assure that 888 is the SD and not the Variance?

Answer 2

Hello, thanks for your answer. I am pretty sure it is SD as the program writes StDev above the number 888.

I am enclosing the date set as well as the results I got. If you can have a quick look I would appreciate it very much

Answer 3

and the data set

Answer 4

your standard deviation looks corerct

have you noticed that there are few outliers in your dataset ?

Answer 5

they are the reason for such huge standard deviation

Answer 6

yes, I did, but I had never seen SD that large that's why I was so confused. Thank you so much

Answer 7

standard deviation is not a good measure of spread in a dataset with outliers

Answer 8

you may use IQR instead

Answer 9

or you could also disregard the outliers

Answer 10

Alright, thank you very much