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Population Variance

Definition

Population variance measures how spread out or dispersed data points are from their mean value within an entire population. It provides information about the variability and diversity present in a population.

Analogy

Imagine you have two different neighborhoods with houses. The population variance would be like comparing how spread out the houses are from their average distance to downtown. A larger variance means houses are more scattered, while a smaller variance means they are closer together.

Related terms

Standard Deviation: Standard deviation is another measure of dispersion that indicates how much individual data points deviate from their mean value within a dataset.

Central Limit Theorem: The central limit theorem states that regardless of the shape of the original distribution, if we take sufficiently large random samples from it, their means will follow an approximately normal distribution.

Variability: Variability refers to how much variation exists among data points within a dataset or population. It can be measured using various statistics such as range, interquartile range, variance, and standard deviation.