Question

Provide an example of how standard deviation is used to measure sports statistics (other than the examples in the book). Feel free to use an example outside of sports. (econ of sports)

Answer 1

Please don't hesitate to give a "thumbs up" in case you're satisfied with the answer

We pick an example of a sports , say Soccer.

Lets say you are a team' coach and want to evaluate a player for your team. You want to measure the distance he covers during a match to identify if the player is capable of a high work-rate. If he has a high work-rate ( can cover more distance on the pitch during the 90 minutes of play) then we say he' good.

But lets say you, as a coach, watch 1 match. And say that the person covers 10 km. You are happy with this performance and buy the player for your team. But what you did not know the the person' distance coverage varies a lot at games. Hence, his standard deviation is high, which means that his performance varies a lot with games. You would want to re-evaluate taking the player for your team.

Hence, standard deviations are used in such cases, where we want to see consistency in the performance in sports.