Standard deviation is a useful concept in performancemanagement. Let us say that a director in a local fire departmentwants to know any variation between the performance of this yearand that of the last year. He draws a sample of 10 response timesof this year ( in minutes): 3.0, 12.0, 7.0, 4.0, 4.0, 6.0, 3.0,9.0, 11.0, and 15.0, comparing them with a sample of 10 responsetimes last year ( in minutes): 8.0, 7.0, 8.0, 6.0, 6.0, 9.0, 7.0,9.0, 8.0, and 6.0.
a. Does he see a performance variation by the mean? ( 10points)
b. Does he see a performance variation by the standarddeviation? If he does, is it performance improvement ordeterioration from the last year? Why? ( 10 points)
c. Now, imagine that your are a citizen receiving fireprotection services from the local fire department. How do youevaluate the response times of the fire department, by the mean, bythe standard deviation, or by both? Please explain
