Answer to Question #138983 in Statistics and Probability for Jeanina Muñoz

Question

Why the standard deviation is the better measure of variability?

Answer 1

• It takes into account all values in a series and does not ignore any item, unlike in quartiles, percentiles, range, median, etc
• It follows the algebraic principles and does not ignore negative values, unlike the mean deviation
• It can be used for higher statistical analysis like skewness and regression
• It enables us to determine the reliability of means of two or more series, when they exhibit similar means
• It is unambiguous, since it is rigidly defined
• It is not greatly affected by flactuations
• It is possible to calculate combined standard deviation of two groups. This is not possible with any other measure of variability