<span>The </span>standard deviation<span> quantifies the amount of variation or </span>dispersion<span> of a set of data, meaning that determining</span><span> a low standard deviation indicates that the data points tend to be close to the </span>mean<span> of the set, while a high standard deviation indicates that the data points are spread out over a wider range of values. In essence it indicates the spread of the data.</span>