{"id":13497,"date":"2015-12-15T21:51:14","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T21:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/?p=13497"},"modified":"2015-12-15T21:51:14","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T21:51:14","slug":"statistics-common-use-of-%cf%83-rather-than-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/statistics-common-use-of-%cf%83-rather-than-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Statistics:  common use of \u03c3 rather than s"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>The tutor continues his discussion about population standard deviation, denoted <em>\u03c3<\/em>, versus sample standard deviation, denoted <em>s<\/em>.<\/h1>\n<p>In <a href=\"?p=13463\">yesterday&#8217;s post<\/a> I gave the formulas for <em>\u03c3<\/em> and <em>s<\/em>.  Of course, many people use their hand calculators to find the standard deviation.  (You can find out how to do so on several different calculators by searching this site:)  Sometimes in introductory statistics, to simplify matters, students are encouraged to use <em>\u03c3<\/em> rather than <em>s<\/em>.  What practical difference might it make?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Example: Find <em>\u03c3<\/em> and <em>s<\/em> for the following data list:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>-11.1, 17, 0, 14.4, 25, 31, 19.7, 8.9, 2, 9.1, 7, 4.4, 15, 21, 29<\/p>\n<p>Solution:<\/p>\n<p>This time I used the Casio fx-260<span style=\"font-variant:small-caps\">solar<\/span>.  You can find out how to do so <a href=\"?p=2752\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u03c3<\/em>=11.15702868<\/p>\n<p><em>s<\/em>=11.54862185<\/p>\n<p><em>s<\/em> is greater by about 3.5%, which is probably not a significant amount in some contexts.  However, it&#8217;s wise to check with your instructor which they prefer.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be talking more about <em>\u03c3<\/em> vs <em>s<\/em> :)<\/p>\n<p>Jack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\">Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tutor continues his discussion about population standard deviation, denoted \u03c3, versus sample standard deviation, denoted s. In yesterday&#8217;s post I gave the formulas for \u03c3 and s. Of course, many people use their hand calculators to find the standard &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/statistics-common-use-of-%cf%83-rather-than-s\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Statistics:  common use of \u03c3 rather than s<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1268,1269],"class_list":["post-13497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-statistics","tag-population-standard-deviation-vs-sample-standard-deviation","tag-using--vs-s-for-standard-deviation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13497"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13511,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13497\/revisions\/13511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}