Mean deviation formula: The mean deviation

The mean deviation ; also called the average deviation is one of the statistical measures used to express the dispersion or spread of values. Reflects how far on average every item in the data set is from the arithmetic mean of the sample data. This measure is used for the identification of variability in a given dataset and it is widely used in various disciplines like finance, engineering, and research. Learn how to calculate the mean deviation of a data set using the formula and examples. Find out the mean deviation for discrete and continuous frequency distributions, and the advantages of using this measure of dispersion. One such measure of dispersion is Mean Deviation . What is Mean Deviation ? The arithmetic average of the deviations of various items from a measure of central tendency ( mean , median, or mode) is known as the Mean Deviation of a series. Other names for Mean Deviation are the First Moment of Dispersion and Average Deviation . A mean deviation is a statistical approach to determine the average deviation of values from the mean in an example. It is calculated first by obtaining the average of the observations. The difference of each observation from the mean is then defined and lastly, the mean deviation is determined through the formula .