First, consider deliberate thinking. Deliberate thinking is relatively slow, rule-based and explicit; a contemplative process of weighing pros and cons, gathering scientific or statistical evidence. It would appear that this makes for pretty solid decision-making.
Jul 24, 2015. Outliers increase the standard deviation. Mean is most affected by outliers, since all values in a sample are given the same weight when calculating mean. A value that is far removed from the mean is going to likely skew your results and increase the standard deviation. Say you have five values: 2, 1, 2, 1.5, and 2.1.
Standard deviation (SD). This describes the spread of values in the sample. The sample standard deviation, s, is a random quantity -- it varies from sample to sample -- but it stays the same on average when the sample size increases. Standard error of the mean (SE). This is the standard deviation of the sample mean, , and describes its accuracy as an estimate of the population mean, . When the sample size increases, the estimator is based on more information and becomes more accurate, so its standard error decreases.