How can I do standard deviation in Ruby?

Solution 1:

module Enumerable

    def sum
      self.inject(0){|accum, i| accum + i }
    end

    def mean
      self.sum/self.length.to_f
    end

    def sample_variance
      m = self.mean
      sum = self.inject(0){|accum, i| accum +(i-m)**2 }
      sum/(self.length - 1).to_f
    end

    def standard_deviation
      Math.sqrt(self.sample_variance)
    end

end 

Testing it:

a = [ 20, 23, 23, 24, 25, 22, 12, 21, 29 ]
a.standard_deviation  
# => 4.594682917363407

01/17/2012:

fixing "sample_variance" thanks to Dave Sag

Solution 2:

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.