You are here:  Resources » Bioinformatics Tools » Glossary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology   


standard deviation

measures the spread of a distribution around the mean. It is often denoted as s and is the square root of the sample variance, denoted s2. A normal distribution is mainly defined by the mean and standard deviation. These parameters give an easy way to summarize data as the sample becomes large: 68% of the values are within one standard deviation of the mean. 95% of the values are within two standard deviations of the mean. More than 99% of the values are within three standard deviations of the mean.

Return to Search Page

If you know of any terms that have been omitted from this glossary that you feel would be useful to include, please send details to the Editorial Office at GenScript.