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Home > Statistics Every Writer Should Know > The Stats Board > Discusssion

standard deviation
Message posted by michisaiah (via 206.111.26.33) on November 19, 2001 at 4:30 PM (ET)

under what condition can a
negative standard deviation be calculated.


READERS RESPOND:
(In chronological order. Most recent at the bottom.)

Re: standard deviation
Message posted by Jack Tomsky (via 208.249.113.130) on November 26, 2001 at 1:05 PM (ET)

A negative variance can be calculated sometimes when using the method of moments. It is possible for this unbiased estimator to yield negative variance estimates. Since a negative variance is outside the admissible range, such estimates are usually truncated to zero.



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