Mid-ocean ridges do not form straight lines but are instead offset in many places by fracture zones, or transform faults. Fracture zones are thought to occur due to zones of weakness in the pre-existing continent before it was rifted apart. Most mid-ocean ridges are divided into hundreds of segments by fracture zones. Along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, fracture zones occur at an average interval of 55 kilometers (34 miles).
(the average) - the sum of all data values divided by the number of the data values. deviation. - the difference between a data value in a set and the mean of the set. - the mean (average) of all deviations in a set equals zero. absolute value. - the distance (a positive quantity) of any value on a number line from zero. - the sum of the absolute values of deviations on each side of the mean are equal. variability. - refers to how spread out (or clustered together) the values are in a data set. - high variablity means the data is spread out.
The standard deviation is the square root of the variance, which in this case is or 1.73. Comparison to mean absolute deviation. The mean absolute deviation is when the negative sign is ignored so that all deviations are converted to positive numbers, summed, and then averaged.he standard deviation is the measure that is most often used to describe variability in data distributions. It can be thought of as a rough measure of the average amount by which observations deviate on either side of the mean.