Reference no: EM133229728

For your discussion, describe two related variables and argue which one you think should have a higher standard deviation and why. Note the "why" part of this argument is hard: you have to come up with reasons why your chosen variable is less predictable compared to the other variable.

For example, I might pick the typical U.S. temperature and typical DC temperature, with DC temperature varying more day to day. The DC temperature has a higher standard deviation because many of the things that make temperature lower in one place make it higher in another place (cold air that goes sweeps down from the Midwest to the South isn't cold air that stays in the Midewest, for example). So DC might experience much lower temperatures because another part of the country is getting warmer. The overall U.S. isn't different day to day but DC certainly is. (I don't know how true this is in practice but I've heard it's easier for climatologists to predict future temperatures than local weatherman because many random errors like this cancel out.)

One thing you want to keep in mind for this question is the dispersion of the observations themselves. Don't think in terms of the average, think in terms of if individual observations will tend to clump next to each other or will individual observations tend to be very different from one another.

Responses could include either (1) thoughtful critiques of the justification or (2) an argument on which variable would have the higher coefficient of variation and why.