3 variants of Standard Deviation in Python

Standard Deviation

Hey, readers! In this article, we will be focusing on the 3 variants of standard deviation in Python.

So before getting started, let us first understand what’s Standard Deviation?

Standard deviation represents the deviation of the data values or entities with respect to the mean or the center value. It is mostly used in the domain of data analytics to explore and analyze the data distribution.

Now, let us further have a look at the various ways of calculating standard deviation in Python in the upcoming section.


Variant 1: Standard Deviation in Python using the stdev() function

Python statistics module provides us with statistics.stdev() function to calculate the standard deviation of a set of values altogether.

Syntax:

statistics.stdev(data)

In the below example, we have created a list and performed the standard deviation operation on the data values as shown below–

Example:

import statistics as std
lst = [1,2,3,4,5]
 
stat = std.stdev(lst)
print(stat)

Output:

1.5811388300841898

Variant 2: Standard deviation using NumPy module

NumPy module offers us various functions to deal with and manipulate the numeric data values.

We can calculate the standard deviation for the range of values using numpy.std() function as shown below

Syntax:

numpy.std(data)

Example:

import numpy as np
num = np.arange(1,6)
stat = np.std(num)
print(stat)

Here, we have made use of numpy.arange() function to generate a set of continuous values between 1-6. Further, the standard deviation has been calculated using std() function.

Output:

1.4142135623730951

Variant 3: Standard deviation with Pandas module

Pandas module enables us to deal with a larger amount of datasets and also provides us with various functions to be performed on these datasets.

With the Pandas module, we can perform various statistics operations on the data values, one of them being standard deviation as shown below–

Syntax:

dataframe.std()

Example:

import pandas as pd
lst = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
data = pd.DataFrame(lst)
stat = data.std()
print(stat)

In this example, we have created a list and then converted the list into a data frame using pandas.dataframe() function. Further, we have calculated the standard deviation of those values present in the data frame using std() function.

Output:

0    2.160247
dtype: float64

Conclusion

By this, we have come to the end of this topic. Feel free to comment below in case you come across any questions.

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