1. Overview
The standard deviation (symbol is sigma – σ) is the measure of the spread of the data around the mean.
In this short tutorial, we’ll see how to calculate the standard deviation in Java.
2. Calculate the Standard Deviation
Population standard deviation is computed using the formula square root of ( ∑ ( Xi – ų ) ^ 2 ) / N, where:
- ∑ is the sum of each element
- Xi is each element of the array
- ų is the mean of the elements of the array
- N is the number of elements
We can easily calculate the standard deviation with the help of Java’s Math class:
public static double calculateStandardDeviation(double[] array) {
// get the sum of array
double sum = 0.0;
for (double i : array) {
sum += i;
}
// get the mean of array
int length = array.length;
double mean = sum / length;
// calculate the standard deviation
double standardDeviation = 0.0;
for (double num : array) {
standardDeviation += Math.pow(num - mean, 2);
}
return Math.sqrt(standardDeviation / length);
}
Let’s test our methods:
double[] array = {25, 5, 45, 68, 61, 46, 24, 95};
System.out.println("List of elements: " + Arrays.toString(array));
double standardDeviation = calculateStandardDeviation(array);
System.out.format("Standard Deviation = %.6f", standardDeviation);
The result will look like this:
List of elements: [25.0, 5.0, 45.0, 68.0, 61.0, 46.0, 24.0, 95.0]
Standard Deviation = 26.732179
3. Conclusion
In this quick tutorial, we’ve learned how to calculate the standard deviation in Java.
As always, the example code from this article can be found over on GitHub.
