combined standard deviation

1.1k Views Asked by At

I am new to Standard Deviation. I have taken a 2 small samples of Data and obtained the mean, and Standard Deviation.enter image description here

I have copied and pasted a picture of my spreadsheet.

As you can see i have worked out the SD and mean of each group.

I have subsequenyly worked out a combined average, and then worked out the differences from combined average from each of the seperate averages.

I then calculated the combined SD using the following Excel formula.

Blockquote

=SQRT((A10*((C13^2)+(C17^2)))+(E10*((G13^2)+(G17^2)))/(A10+E10))

Blockquote

I cant get my head round how the SD of each sample is 0, yet the combined SD is 1.17. Can someone please explain this? Maybe i have calculated the combined SD incorrectly?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

4
On

I think you're calculating things correctly.

Each sampling taken separately has a standard deviation of $0$ because every item is the same price in the sample. There is no variation.

But when you combine the samples into one, now you have a variation, so the standard deviation is greater than $0$.