![]() ![]() ![]() If we were to subtract the data point from the mean, (which would be (2) from (3), or (3) - (2)), we would get the same absolute difference between the two values but we might come away thinking our z-score is positive, since we'd get a positive difference of (1) before dividing by the standard deviation, which is always positive. When we subtract (3) from (2) to find the difference, that gives us a negative answer, (-1), which we then divide by the standard deviation to see how far the difference between the mean and the data point are, in terms of standard deviations (the definition of a z-score). Here we have a mean of (3), and a data point with a value of (2). ![]() If we didn't look at the absolute values, any dataset with both positive and negative data points would be messed up when we find the sum of each difference before dividing by (n) or (n-1) and then finding the square root. When finding the standard deviation this doesn't matter, since we're only interested in the absolute value of the discrepancy between each point and the mean, as standard deviation is an absolute value. We want the absolute difference between the numbers but also the direction the point is from the mean. ![]()
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