Linked Questions
70 questions linked to/from Why square the difference instead of taking the absolute value in standard deviation?
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Squared Error vs Absolute Error loss functions [duplicate]
The two most popular types of loss functions are
1) squared error: $L(y,f(x))=(y-f(x))^2$ --> best estimate is the $E(Y|x) $
2) absolute error: $L(y,f(x))=|y-f(x)|$ --> best estimate is the $median(Y|...
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Squaring floats between -1 and 1 reduces sum of squares, so why do it? [duplicate]
I have been learning basic statistical testing as it relates to agriculture and have become familiar with the common practice of summing squared raw deviation values, whether in something simple like ...
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Regarding squaring the deviations when calculating the standard deviation [duplicate]
I learned that the deviations are squared for a number of reasons.
(1) They make all values positive. Otherwise the sum of the deviation would be zero. But why not just take the absolute value of the ...
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Benefit of squaring loss [duplicate]
Why take the square of the difference between the label and the prediction? What is the advantage of squaring?
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Why is sample variance squared? (Basic Question) [duplicate]
I have two questions, each of which I think might be related to each other but I'm not sure. Both concern the definition of variance as:
$var(x) = s_x^2 = \dfrac{1}{n-1} \sum_{i=1}^{n}(x_i - \bar{...
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Question about the meaning of Variance/Standard Deviation [duplicate]
I know that these two functions have statistical significance, but I'm finding it hard to grasp any intuition about them. I understand that in their own way they represent some type of 'average' ...
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Why is there a need to find a variance and take the square root to get a standard deviation? [duplicate]
My question is why is the formula for finding the standard deviation of a given data (either grouped or non grouped) the way it is?
so let me start from the definition of a standard deviation with my ...
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Why doesn't Stdev take absolute value of x- xbar? [duplicate]
Newbie here. Curious why standard deviation subtracts x from xbar and then ^2's them instead of skipping hte squaring/square-rooting and instead takes the ABS value of each x-xbar
Thanks mods
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Why isn't absolute deviation used [duplicate]
If the reason that standard deviation is used is that it's easier to just square the distance every time than find the absolute value. Then why is √(E(x-m)^2)/n not used because if I'm not mistaken |x|...
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What intuitive explanation is there for the central limit theorem?
In several different contexts we invoke the central limit theorem to justify whatever statistical method we want to adopt (e.g., approximate the binomial distribution by a normal distribution). I ...
user28
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What's the difference between variance and standard deviation?
I was wondering what the difference between the variance and the standard deviation is.
If you calculate the two values, it is clear that you get the standard deviation out of the variance, but what ...
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Understanding "variance" intuitively
What is the cleanest, easiest way to explain someone the concept of variance? What does it intuitively mean? If one is to explain this to their child how would one go about it?
It's a concept that I ...
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Mean absolute deviation vs. standard deviation
In the text book "New Comprehensive Mathematics for O Level" by Greer (1983), I see averaged deviation calculated like this:
Sum up absolute differences between single values and the mean. Then
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Is minimizing squared error equivalent to minimizing absolute error? Why squared error is more popular than the latter?
When we conduct linear regression $y=ax+b$ to fit a bunch of data points $(x_1,y_1),(x_2,y_2),...,(x_n,y_n)$, the classic approach minimizes the squared error. I have long been puzzled by a question ...
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Can simple linear regression be done without using plots and linear algebra?
I'm completely blind and come from a programming background.
What I'm trying to do is to learn machine learning, and to do this, I first need to learn about linear regression. All the explanations on ...
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