Interpreting Standard Deviation

Your workplace reduces all workplace scores on a particular employee aptitude test into z-scores which are placed into a district-wide distribution of scores. Last year, your newly hired employees ranged between -1 and +2 standard deviations, and this year’s newly hired employees rangebetween -2 and +3.

What do these numbers tell you about the group entering your workplace?

The standard deviation is a measure of the dispersion of data from the mean of the data. If the standard deviation is high, the data are spread out, and if the standard deviation is low, the data are closely bunched together near the mean.

You can describe each data point by saying how far it is from the mean in terms of standard deviations …

The expert examines interpreting standard deviation in the workplace.