How to Interpret Standard Deviation. In the example above for Apple, the data show that the average return for the three-month period was 0.08 percent.

For example, over the last 10 years, the S&P 500's average annual return was 11.21%, and it had an annual standard deviation of about 15.25%, according to Morningstar.

Example of Using Standard Deviation Suppose a mutual fund achieves the following annual rates of return over the course of five years: 4%, 6%, 8.5%, 2%, and 4%. The mean value, or average, is 4.9%.

Standard deviation is the dispersion between two or more data sets. For example, if you were designing a new business logo and you presented four options to 110 customers, the standard deviation ...

Example of Residual Standard Deviation Start by calculating residual values. For example, assuming you have a set of four observed values for an unnamed experiment, ...

An Industry Example of Pooled Standard Deviation. The manager of sales wanted to know the average sales of three offices as ...

To answer that, I found the standard deviation of 55 players—15 quarterbacks, and 20 of both running backs and wide receivers—each the best at their positions (according to ESPN's rankings).

Issue Number Two: Hidden Risks. The second complaint about the standard-deviation calculation is that it overlooks hidden risks.This is certainly true; there are many real-life examples.

For example, if Mutual Fund A has an average annual return of 10% and a standard deviation of 4%, you would expect about 68% of the time for the return to be between 6% and 14% ...