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Applied and theoretical statistics: e.g. statistical inference, regression, time series, multivariate analysis, data analysis, Markov chain Monte Carlo, design of experiments.

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Why is it so cool to square numbers (in terms of finding the standard deviation)?

When we want to find the standard deviation of $\{1,2,2,3,5\}$ we do $$\sigma = \sqrt{ {1 \over 5-1} \left( (1-2.6)^2 + (2-2.6)^2 + (2-2.6)^2 + (3-2.6)^2 + (5 - 2.6)^2 \right) } \approx 1.52$$. Why …
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