absolute deviation
- noun
- /ˈæb.sə.luːt ˌdɪ.viˈeɪ.ʃən/
- Specialized
:
deviación absoluta
- The statistician calculated the absolute deviation of each score from the mean to understand the data's variability.
Examples
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The participant's score was the mean of the absolute deviations in degrees from the verticality over the eight trials.
Academic text (2003) -
However, as linear programming becomes better understood and readily available on the microcomputer, certain non-algebraic operations, including absolute deviation methods, may be more commonly used.
Academic text (1993) -
That would be called the "mean absolute deviation."
Blog text (25) -
The mean of the absolute deviations in degrees from the verticality over the eight trials was the participant's score.
Academic text (2008) -
We, instead of squaring them, we could just take their absolute values instead and come up with something called the least absolute deviations estimator.
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Finally, there are quantile estimators which extend the sort of mean absolute deviation criterion.
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Absolute deviation methods, whether they are applied to the measurement of variability or correlation, are generally regarded with disfavor because they are non-algebraic in nature.
Academic text (1993) -
To determine how spread out the data is, he found the absolute deviation of each value from the central point.
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The absolute deviation provides a clear measure of how far each observation differs from the average.
Surface Forms
Morphology
‘Deviation’ clearly signals a difference from a norm, and in quantitative contexts ‘absolute’ often marks magnitude without regard to sign, so a learner knowing both words could plausibly infer this refers to the (non‑negative) difference from a point. However, the specialized statistical sense of ‘absolute’ (i.e. absolute value) is technical and not fully predictable from everyday meanings, so the term is only partially transparent to a B1 learner without prior exposure.
Etymology
Absolute deviation comes from a simple number-line idea: deviation is a value's 'difference' from a centre, and absolute means we ignore plus or minus and take only the distance. So absolute deviation is literally the 'how far away' a number is from the average or middle value, which is why it measures how spread out the data are.
