Expert: Scott A Wilson - 9/17/2010

Question
I'm so confused!!! I'm taking high school algerbra in 8th grade and there is
this question on my homework i nEed help with


When finding standard deviation how does the formula change to
compensate for any outliers?


What?

It would be great if you could give me the answer but simplifing it into
kindergarden speach would work to:)

Answer
The standard deviation is only an estimate.
For example, the height of men is 5'10" with a standard deviation of 3".   1 standard deviation is 3", 2 standard deviations is 6", and 3 standard deviations would be 9".

This would mean the following:
5'10"±3" would contain the height of about 68% of the men,
5'10"±6" would contain the height of about 96% of the men, nd
5'10"±9' would contain the height of about 99% of the men.

By 5'10"±3" I mean 5'7" to 6'1".

I found a very good place to look to be
http://investing.calsci.com/statistics.html