This guy makes really good videos about Statistics. His voice is suspiciously very similar to the voice behind many of the 3Blue1Brown videos.
For calculating 'sample' variance, we divide the sum of the squares of the difference of the values from the mean and divide by the population minus one.
I still think the sum of the absolute values divided by n (not n-1) is a more rational measure of spread than the standard deviation given in canon. The attempt to increase the variance by decreasing the denominator from n to n-1 is just pathetic and childish in my opinion. Yeah I'm a heretic and you can burn me at the stake. There seems to be some amount of intellectual bullying by the academic elites to accept the dogma just because ... we have a mythical deity called mu who we worship instead of respecting x-bar like good rational scientists.
There is some advanced mathematics and statistics based on the "degrees of freedom" derivations where this RMS (root mean square) thingy is necessary. You may recall having seen it in the early days of the gas equation derivation (PV=nRT). Well go ahead and use it there. Why burden 99% of humanity with this "square of the differences" nonsense ?
O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!
Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field — Walter Scott
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.
— E. F. Schumacker
