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Standard Deviation

I know this seems like a very silly question but could anyone tell me if this is possible:

I am interpreting some data and I have 50 values. The average is 3.64 and my standard deviation is 2.2109191. Does the standard deviation seem too big? Is it incorrect to have standard deviation so close to average?

Many thanks.

statistics
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updated by Michael Dondrup Michael Dondrup • written by Diana Diana

It's not related to bioinformatics, but: you are asking the question the wrong way: "too big (for what) in comparison to what?" The sd and mean can of course take any value that only depends on the data. The sd is is a measure for average deviation from the mean, but otherwise the estimates (sd, and mean are independent). Wikipedia is your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

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written by Michael Dondrup Michael Dondrup

Thanks!I knew it was a stupid question...but I've sorted it out now.

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written by Diana Diana

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