THE MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATION

Probably the two most useful descriptive statistics in psychological research.

The Mean
The mean of set of scores (abbreviated M) is the sum of the scores divided by the
number of scores. Along with the median and the mode, the mean is just one
measure of the central tendency of a set of scores, but the mean is by far the most
common and the most useful.
The Standard Deviation
Although the mean tells us where the center of a set of scores is, it does not tell us
how variable those scores are. For example, the scores 45, 55, 50, 53, and 47 have a
mean of 50. But the scores 20, 80, 50, 38, and 62 also have a mean of 50. Note,
however, that the second set of scores is much more variable than the first set. So in
addition to a measure of central tendency, we need a measure of variability.
The standard deviation (abbreviated SD) is, roughly, the average amount by
which the scores in a set differ from the mean. The scores in the first set above differ
from the mean (50) by 5, 5, 0, 3, and 3. So on average, they differ from the mean by
a shade over 3. The scores in the second set differ from the mean (again 50) by 30,
30, 0, 12, and 12. So on average, they differ from the mean by about 17. The second
set of scores has a greater standard deviation, which reflects the greater variability
among the scores.
Unfortunately, the standard deviation is not just the mean difference between the
scores and the mean. It is just a bit more complicated. Here is how to compute it. 1)
Find the mean. 2) Subtract the mean from each score (or each score from the mean; it
does not matter). 3) Square each of these differences. (Remember that the square of
a negative number is positive.) 4) Find the mean of these squared differences. 5) Find
the square root of this mean. Voila! You have the standard deviation.
For now, when you compute a standard deviation, do it using a table like the one
below. Note that Xrefers to the scores in the set, which appear in the first column.
The mean of this set of scores is 6, which appears in the every row of the second
column. The difference between each score and the mean appears in the third
column. The squares of each of these differences appear in the fourth column. Below
the fourth column, I have computed the mean of the squared differences and taken
the square root of this mean. (Raising a number to the power is the same as taking
its square root.) So the standard deviation of this set of scores is 2.45, meaning that
the scores differ from the mean of 6 by an average of about 2.45.
X

XM

(X M)2

+2

+2

+1

+3

+1

+2

16

16

X = 60

(X M)2 =
60

M = 60 / 10
=6

SD2 = 60 /
10 = 6
SD = 61/2 =
2.45

The Importance of the Standard Deviation

There are a lot of reasons that it is important to consider the standard deviation of a
set of scores. Probably the most important is that it gives us interesting information
about the scores that the mean alone does not give. For example, consider an exam
in a research methods course. In one section of the course, the mean score was 70
and the standard deviation was 4. This means that overall the students did OK
(indicated by the mean of 70) and also that most of them tended to score pretty close
to 70 (indicated by the standard deviation of 4). So most of the students did OK. In
another section of the course, the mean score was also 70 but the standard deviation
was 20. Although one still might say that overall the students did OK (indicated by the
mean of 70), the high standard deviation indicates that there was a lot of variability.
Some students must have scored quite low and others must have scored quite high.
So even though the means were the same, the standard deviations paint very different
pictures of student performance on these exams.
Another example: You may have heard that people who work in the field of
traffic safety say that what makes a stretch of highway dangerous is not how fast
people drive, but how variable their speed is. For example, a stretch of highway on
which peoples mean speed is 80 will be fairly accident free if the standard deviation
is, say, 3. This is because there is not much variability; people are all clipping along at
close to the same speed. But a stretch of highway on which peoples mean speed is
65 might be quite dangerous if the standard deviation is 12. This is because some
people must be driving considerably slower than 65 while others must be driving
considerably faster. This is likely to lead to lots of braking and lane changing, which
makes accidents more likely.
WHAT A P-VALUE TELLS YOU ABOUT STATISTICAL DATA
By Deborah J. Rumsey from Statistics For Dummies, 2nd Edition
When you perform a hypothesis test in statistics, a p-value helps you determine
the significance of your results. Hypothesis tests are used to test the validity of a claim
that is made about a population. This claim thats on trial, in essence, is called the null
hypothesis1.
The alternative hypothesis is the one you would believe if the null hypothesis is
concluded to be untrue. The evidence in the trial is your data and the statistics that go
along with it. All hypothesis tests ultimately use a p-value to weigh the strength of the
evidence (what the data are telling you about the population). The p-value is a number
between 0 and 1 and interpreted in the following way:
A small p-value (typically 0.05) indicates strong evidence against the null
hypothesis, so you reject the null hypothesis.
A large p-value (> 0.05) indicates weak evidence against the null hypothesis, so
you fail to reject the null hypothesis.
p-values very close to the cutoff (0.05) are considered to be marginal (could go
either way). Always report the p-value so your readers can draw their own conclusions.
1

In statistical inference of observed data of a scientific experiment, the null hypothesis refers to a
general or default position: that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena, or that a
potential medical treatment has no effect. Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis and thus
concluding that there are grounds for believing that there is a relationship between two phenomena or
that a potential treatment has a measurable effect is a central task in the modern practice of science,
and gives a precise sense in which a claim is capable of being proven false.

For example, suppose a pizza place claims their delivery times are 30 minutes
or less on average but you think its more than that. You conduct a hypothesis test
because you believe the null hypothesis, H o, that the mean delivery time is 30 minutes
max, is incorrect. Your alternative hypothesis (H a) is that the mean time is greater than
30 minutes. You randomly sample some delivery times and run the data through the
hypothesis test, and your p-value turns out to be 0.001, which is much less than 0.05.
In real terms, there is a probability of 0.001 that you will mistakenly reject the pizza
places claim that their delivery time is less than or equal to 30 minutes. Since
typically we are willing to reject the null hypothesis when this probability is less than
0.05, you conclude that the pizza place is wrong; their delivery times are in fact more
than 30 minutes on average, and you want to know what theyre gonna do about it!
(Of course, you could be wrong by having sampled an unusually high number of late
pizza deliveries just by chance.)