How can I do standard deviation in Ruby?

Question

I have several records with a given attribute, and I want to find the standard deviation.

How do I do that?

Answer 1

It appears that Angela may have been wanting an existing library. After playing with statsample, array-statisics, and a few others, I'd recommend the descriptive_statistics gem if you're trying to avoid reinventing the wheel.

gem install descriptive_statistics

$ irb
1.9.2 :001 > require 'descriptive_statistics'
 => true 
1.9.2 :002 > samples = [1, 2, 2.2, 2.3, 4, 5]
 => [1, 2, 2.2, 2.3, 4, 5] 
1.9.2p290 :003 > samples.sum
 => 16.5 
1.9.2 :004 > samples.mean
 => 2.75 
1.9.2 :005 > samples.variance
 => 1.7924999999999998 
1.9.2 :006 > samples.standard_deviation
 => 1.3388427838995882 

I can't speak to its statistical correctness, or your comfort with monkey-patching Enumerable; but it's easy to use and easy to contribute to.