What is the final step in calculating standard deviation?

To understand the final step in calculating standard deviation, it is essential to recognize the role variance plays in the process. Standard deviation is a measure of how spread out the numbers in a data set are, and it is derived from variance.

To calculate the standard deviation, the first steps are finding the mean and then determining the differences between each data point and the mean. These differences are then squared to eliminate negative values and to emphasize larger deviations. Once all the squared differences are calculated, the next step involves summing these squared differences, which results in the total squared deviation.

Afterward, to find the variance, you divide the sum of squared differences by the number of data points (for population variance) or by the number of data points minus one (for sample variance). The final step in calculating standard deviation is taking the square root of the variance. Therefore, when looking for the last action that leads to finding the standard deviation, finding the variance is crucial, as it directly precedes the calculation of the square root.

In conclusion, identifying variance as the final step in the calculation of standard deviation aligns perfectly with the process of deriving standard deviation itself, reinforcing the understanding of the relationship between these two statistical measures.