someone please explain Standard Deviation to me.

Question

First of all, an example; mean age of the children in a test is 12.93, with a standard deviation of .76.

Now, maybe I am just over thinking this, but everything I Google gives me this big convoluted explanation of what standard deviation is without addressing the kiddy pool I’m standing in.

Edit: you guys have been fantastic! This has all helped tremendously, if I could hug you all I would.

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

1) you have a mean, the average of all the data points in your set.
2) each one of those data points will have a variance between themselves and the mean.
3) you’d like to know what is the average amount of variance of those data points from the mean.

That’s it. That’s the standard deviation. The stuff about what it means for a normal distribution can come later.