Let the mean of observations and and their variance be . Then their mean deviation about the mean is equal to:
- A
- B
- C
- D
Let the mean of observations and and their variance be . Then their mean deviation about the mean is equal to:
Correct answer:C
Standard Method
Given: The observations are . Their mean is and variance is .
Find: The mean deviation about the mean.
Using the mean condition:
So,
Using the variance formula:
Now use
Substituting the values:
Hence and are roots of
Factoring,
So, and , or vice versa.
Now compute the mean deviation about the mean :
Therefore, the mean deviation about the mean is . The correct option is C.
Using sum and sum of squares
Given: Mean , variance for the six observations .
Find: Mean deviation about the mean.
From the mean, total sum of observations is
The known four numbers add up to
Therefore,
From the variance relation,
So,
Hence,
Now the known squares sum to
Thus,
Use
which gives
Therefore the pair is obtained from
so the values are and .
The observations are therefore with mean . Their absolute deviations from the mean are . Hence,
So the correct option is C.
Using variance as instead of is wrong here because the question uses variance of the full set of observations, not sample variance. Use denominator , not .
Forgetting that the given mean is and treating it as is incorrect. The statement says the variance is , while the solution shows the mean is from the data.
Computing mean deviation without first finding and is wrong because the full data set is needed. First use the mean and variance conditions to determine and , then find and .
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