bus math qrb501 wk3 qu-7

A practical use of mean & standard deviation

More analysis on our radio personalities...

As an analyst, one thing you might note for Personality Y with the larger standard deviation is that this personality might be one that polarizes listeners in some way.  In other words, the ratings for Personality X are more centered around the mean whereas the ones for Personality Y are more spread out.  Sometimes we see this in an analysis when there is an underlying variable for which we did not account.

For instance, in this case, the second personality might be super appealing to men, but not to women.  Perhaps this personality is more appealing to older listeners than younger ones.  It would be good for us to examine the ratings a bit more to see if something of this sort is the case.

This type of problem is seen a lot in analyses where someone is trying to compare locations of a business that are in different geographical regions, are different sizes, or have different target markets.