[BruceZ]

<pre><font class="small">code:</font><hr>



170----*-*------------------
v * * &lt;--- rms level = 120 volts
o * *
l 0---*-------*-------*-------&gt; time
t * *
s * *
-170-----------*-*----------

</pre><hr>
120 volts is the standard deviation of the voltage (how many people realized that?) however, in this case it is not true that 68% of the voltages lie within 1 standard deviation of average because that is generally true only for normally distrubuted data (like your poker results). If your poker results look like the above, you've got a problem.

I had a slight indexing problem with the above formulas which I might as well correct here:

If x[n] are values of N measurments, and the average value is u, then:

variance = 1/N*sum[n=1 to N](x[n]-u)^2
standard deviation = sqrt(variance)

average distance from average would be:
1/N*sum[n=1 to N](|x[n]-u|)