.. _statistics: Statistics background ======================= for understanding bandwidth scanners/generators Standard deviation ------------------- The formula for the sample standard deviation is .. math:: s={\sqrt {\frac {\sum _{i=1}^{N}(x_{i}-{\overline {x}})^{2}}{N-1}}} where :math:`{x_{1},x_{2},\ldots ,x_{N}}` are the observed values of the sample items, :math:`{\overline {x}}` is the mean value of these observations, and N is the number of observations in the sample. .. image:: ../images/Comparison_standard_deviations.svg [stdev]_ Standard score ---------------- If the population mean and population standard deviation are known, the standard score of a raw score x[1] is calculated as .. math:: z={x-\mu \over \sigma } where: μ is the mean of the population. σ is the standard deviation of the population. .. image:: ../images/The_Normal_Distribution.svg [stdscore]_