Sticks And
Stones
People
talking, trying to break us up
Why don't they let us be
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But talk don't bother me
But even if
they don’t break any bones, using the right word is better.
Deviation is a loaded word, and its use may do more harm than good. Some common synonyms for deviation are perversion,
anomaly, error, aberration, abnormality.
However, when the term is used in statistics it is not intended as a loaded
term. It only means the amount by which a single measurement differs from a fixed value such
as the mean. In less contentious terms
this might be defined as complexity. If there was
no standard deviation, as used in statistics, only one value would have a probability. Thus a little complexity might be considered
to be a good thing. While something that is very complex, e.g., a Rube Goldberg-ish
contraption with unnecessary complexity, might incorrectly imply that a any value is correct. A standard deviation of 1, in statistics, means that
distribution is normal. If the name is changed from standard deviation to complexity, it might be more easily understood.
The human body is composed of 60% water.
The human body is also complex, it consists of many different cells and
organs. A pail of water is 100%
water. It is not complex. Excluding the pail,
it only consists of water. It would be foolish
to say that there is no difference between a human body and a pail of water
because complexity, i.e., standard deviation, matters. It is true in statistics that for a normal distribution
if the mean grows, then the complexity also must grow for the distribution to
still be normal and the probability at zero to also be zero. A human body is more complex than a pail of
water. If you look at standard deviation
compared to water, there is no standard deviation for the pail of water but
there is a standard deviation with respect to water in the human body. A more palatable term might be complexity, not
deviation. Then sticks and stones, and words will not hurt.
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