How deeply does Statistics Slam Dunk cover median absolute deviation?

Defines the measure, implements grouped R arithmetic, and interprets a trend chart alongside other dispersion measures.

Median absolute deviation

Median absolute deviation is a measure of dispersion based on the absolute differences between observations and the median of the data set.

Median absolute deviation measures how widely observations spread around a data set’s median. For NBA analysis, it helps compare the consistency of teams’ regular-season wins within each season. section 18.0 section 20.7

Compute the measure by following this practical sequence:

Aggregate those absolute differences to compare year-over-year dispersion. section 18.4.5

NBA regular-season wins

In R, `records %>% group_by(Season) %>% mutate(mdad_wins = abs(W - median(W)))` creates each team’s distance from its season median. The resulting annual values can be plotted with ggplot2. The NBA comparison found that median-based results were nearly identical to mean-based results, while dispersion increased during the early salary-cap era. section 18.4.5

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Outlier Detection in PythonMedian absolute deviation is a robust measure of statistical spread equal to the median of the absolute deviations from the data's median.

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Related concepts

mean absolute deviationalternative to · Mean absolute deviation is the average absolute distance of observations from a specified reference value, commonly their mean.
countuses · A count is a numerical tally or operation determining how many items, occurrences, records, or values satisfy specified criteria.
variancekind of · Variance is the expected squared deviation of a random variable from its mean, measuring the spread of its distribution.
thresholdconfigures · A threshold is a boundary value against which a quantity is compared to determine whether a condition is met or an action or decision is triggered.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Statistics Slam Dunk. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.