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Making Statistics Vital
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Measures of Centre and Spread: Do We Divide by n or n-1?
This activity is designed to enable students to gain a deeper understanding of the topic of variance and the difference between finding the population variance and the sample variance. Students might expect that the sum of the deviations would be divided by n when finding the sample variance instead of (n-1). The resource explains when n is used and when (n-1) is used. The accompanying spreadsheet enables students to simulate many throws of samples of 10 dice to show that the average sample variance is a good approximation of the population variance when (n-1) is used.
This resource is part of the Making Stats Vital collection from Jonny Griffiths.
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