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When is the value of the standard deviation for a data set zero? Give one example. Calculate the standard deviation for the example and show that its value is zero.

Short Answer

Expert verified
The standard deviation of a data set is zero when all the numbers in the data set are the same. An example of such a dataset is [5, 5, 5, 5]. Calculating the standard deviation of this data set using the standard deviation formula gives a result of zero, as expected.

Step by step solution

01

Understand the Concept of Standard Deviation

The standard deviation is a measure of how spread out the numbers in a data set are. If the standard deviation is zero, it means all the numbers in the data set are identical because there is no 'deviation' or variation among the numbers.
02

Provide Example

An example of such a data set is [5, 5, 5, 5]. All the numbers in this data set are equal, so the standard deviation should be zero.
03

Calculate Standard Deviation

The formula for the standard deviation \( \sigma \) is: \[ \sigma = \sqrt{\frac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^{N}(x_i - \mu)^2} \] where: \(N\) is the number of observations in the dataset; \(x_i\) are the observed values; and \( \mu \) is the mean of the dataset. For the given dataset (5,5,5,5), the mean \( \mu \) is 5. Replace these values into the formula, and you get: \[ \sigma = \sqrt{\frac{1}{4}\sum_{i=1}^{4}(5 - 5)^2} \] which reduces to: \[ \sigma = \sqrt{0} \] So, the standard deviation \( \sigma \) is indeed 0.

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