Which measure is used to find the distance of each data point from the mean?

The measure that is used to find the distance of each data point from the mean is the standard deviation. This statistic quantifies how much the individual data points in a dataset differ from the mean value of that dataset.

To calculate the standard deviation, one first finds the mean of the data set, then determines the deviation of each data point from that mean (which involves subtracting the mean from each data point), and subsequently squares those deviations to avoid negative values. The squared deviations are then averaged (for population standard deviation, it’s divided by the number of data points, while for sample standard deviation, it’s divided by one less than that number to account for sample size), and finally, the square root of that average yields the standard deviation itself.

This measure is particularly useful since it not only indicates how spread out the data points are relative to the mean but also provides a basis for understanding the variability within the data set. It is commonly utilized in various fields, including quality control, finance, and research, making it a fundamental concept in statistical analysis.