Standard deviation and variance are two statistical measures for dispersion.

Posted: January 10th, 2022

Standard deviation and variance are two statistical measures for dispersion. They can be used to determine how variable or volatile a series of data is. Your best friend, Barry Markowitz, has argued that risk can be measured using either of these statistics. That is, if you want to know how risky a share or a currency is, for example, you would measure the standard deviation or variance of the share returns or the currency price over time. Is Barry correct? If so, why? (LO 18.2)