How to Use standard deviation in a Sentence

standard deviation

noun
  • The smaller the standard deviation, the tighter the points are spread across the league.
    — Mark Carey, New York Times, 24 May 2026
  • The smaller the standard deviation, the tighter the points are spread across the league.
    — Mark Carey, New York Times, 26 Jan. 2026
  • His grounder rate was also over a full standard deviation above average.
    — Tony Blengino, Forbes, 25 Jan. 2022
  • That’s more than a two standard deviation move, suggesting the bond selloff may be overdone.
    — Frank Holmes, Forbes, 2 Mar. 2021
  • Nine of the 13 had K rates of at least one-half standard deviation above league average.
    — Tony Blengino, Forbes, 8 Apr. 2021
  • The most extreme spikes—those 10 standard deviations above the mean or more—skewed even more positive.
    — Andrea Fuller, WSJ, 22 Jan. 2019
  • The standard deviation of monthly price returns in a year was used to calculate the volatility of a month.
    — Ganesh Rao, CNBC, 7 Aug. 2024
  • The standard deviation for the S & P 500 for that month comes in at 6%.
    — Fred Imbert, CNBC, 3 Sep. 2024
  • His pop up rate is over a standard deviation above league average, and his grounder rate is over a half standard deviation above.
    — Tony Blengino, Forbes.com, 9 Sep. 2025
  • But the standard deviation of female lifespan — a measure of variation — dropped by six years.
    — Jason P. Dinh, Discover Magazine, 2 Aug. 2022
  • One standard deviation above the mean in this variable adds one year to predicted life Black expectancy.
    — Time, 23 Nov. 2022
  • Rondo has one of the highest standard deviations in the league for players in and around his average production.
    — Doug Norrie, SI.com, 26 Feb. 2018
  • As a result, the mean and the standard deviation for each characteristic should be about the same—but not too identical.
    — David Adam, Scientific American, 6 Aug. 2019
  • In all 20 of his seasons, his strikeout rate was over one-half standard deviation lower than league average.
    — Tony Blengino, Forbes, 13 May 2021
  • The red band shows the range of male scores within one standard deviation of average; the blue band shows the corresponding women’s range.
    — Alex Hutchinson, Outside Online, 30 Jan. 2025
  • Places with monsoon seasons will have a larger standard deviation in rainfall; places with roughly even rainfall across the year will be lower.
    — Becky Lang, Discover Magazine, 1 Aug. 2013
  • These indicators were then all normalized to have a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1.
    — Mary Radcliffe, ABC News, 18 June 2024
  • The team based its claim on the fact that, at every age, the average height of children at each site was within half a standard deviation of the over-all average.
    — Manvir Singh, The New Yorker, 24 Mar. 2025
  • The only real question mark is Rondo, whose standard deviation of minutes is the thing of nightmares.
    — Doug Norrie, SI.com, 7 Feb. 2018
  • All league averages held steady, as well as the trend of decreasing BAs as the standard deviation of launch angle widens.
    — John Laghezza, New York Times, 19 Mar. 2026
  • For instance, the basal heights of children in India differed by more than a standard deviation from those of children in Haiti.
    — Manvir Singh, The New Yorker, 24 Mar. 2025
  • The shares are within one standard deviation of their 320-day moving average.
    — Schaeffer's Investment Research, Forbes, 28 Mar. 2024
  • Alphabet stock is trading within one standard deviation of its 40-day moving average for the sixth time in the past three years.
    — Schaeffer's Investment Research, Forbes, 3 May 2023
  • That rate, a fifth of a standard deviation every decade, is about the same improvement as has been seen in IQ tests over the past 80 years.
    — The Economist, 30 Sep. 2017
  • To put this in technical terms, no other NBA team has a lower standard deviation in wins or end-of-season rankings this decade.
    — Phillip Reese, sacbee, 17 Feb. 2018
  • In July of this year, the ratio surpassed the 200% threshold – representing more than a two standard deviation above its long-term trend.
    — Nick Sargen, Forbes, 2 Sep. 2021
  • The statistical evidence supports this when looking at the standard deviation — denoting the spread of a dataset — of points after 37 games across the past seven seasons.
    — Mark Carey, New York Times, 24 May 2026
  • The volatility of Brent crude, the international benchmark, has fallen to around 22%, measured by the standard deviation of daily price moves over the past year.
    — Sarah McFarlane, WSJ, 1 June 2018
  • From 2021-24, his fly ball, line drive and ground ball exit speeds were over one-half standard deviation above average, except for grounders in 2023.
    — Tony Blengino, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Athletes with sport psychology support perform roughly half a standard deviation better than those without, moving from around the 50th to the 70th percentile.
    — Bydr. Corrie Block, Forbes.com, 23 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'standard deviation.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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