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

SPORTS STATISTICS
Message posted by ANTHONY on November 16, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)

My question involves NBA totals. For example say team A scores 90, 85, 105 and 75 pts a game. Team A's opponents score 85,75,95, and 100 pts against team A. How would you go about finding the standard deviation for both teams. Also, after finding the standard deviation, what would the deviation represent?


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Re: SPORTS STATISTICS
Message posted by JG on November 16, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)

If you measure average as the mean, then standard deviation measures variability or consistancy. In this case, the mean is 88.75 for both sets of data, the sample standard deviations are 12.5 and 11.1 and the population standard deviations are 10.8 and 9.6 . That is, both teams have the same average and team B is slightly more consistent than team A . See a basic statistics book for more details as to what it all means.



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