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Re: Which of the following sets has the smallest standard deviation? [#permalink]
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Hi All,

Standard Deviation is a relatively rare concept on the GMAT (you'll likely see it just once on Test Day). In addition, the GMAT will NEVER ask you to actually calculate S.D., so you really just need to understand the 'concept' behind that math. In simple terms, S.D. is about how 'spread out' a group of numbers is. The more 'spread out' the numbers, the higher the S.D.; the more 'close together' the numbers are, the lower the S.D. The smallest possible S.D. is 0 - and that's when all of the numbers in a group are the SAME.

Based on that last concept, the smallest S.D. among the 5 answer choices is...

Final Answer:

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Re: Which of the following sets has the smallest standard deviation? [#permalink]
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Bunuel wrote:
Which of the following sets has the smallest standard deviation?

A. {2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2}
B. {3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5}
C. {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}
D. {1, 1, 5, 8, 9, 11}
E. {1, 4, 4, 7, 9, 12}



Standard deviation is the measure of the separation among the terms.

No deviation among the term = ZERO Standard deviation


Option A will have ZERO standard deviation

The increasing order of the standard deviation of the sets given in 5 options will be as follows

A < B < C < D and E are close but as per my observation standard deviation of D should be greater than the SD of E because two repeated elements in E are closer to mean and two repeated elements in D are closer to extreme
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Re: Which of the following sets has the smallest standard deviation? [#permalink]
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Bunuel wrote:
Which of the following sets has the smallest standard deviation?

A. {2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2}
B. {3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5}
C. {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}
D. {1, 1, 5, 8, 9, 11}
E. {1, 4, 4, 7, 9, 12}


The smallest possible standard deviation for any set is 0, and the standard deviation of a set will be zero when all the data points are the same. Thus, the set from answer A will have a standard deviation of 0.

Answer: A
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Re: Which of the following sets has the smallest standard deviation? [#permalink]
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