deviation

/ˌdiviˈeɪʃən/
noun
  1. An action or change that is different from what is usual, expected, or planned.
    • The pilot reported a slight deviation from the flight path due to bad weather.
    • There was a deviation in the test results, so the experiment had to be repeated.
    • Any deviation from the recipe can change the taste of the cake.
  2. In statistics, the amount by which a single measurement differs from a fixed value, such as the average.
    • The standard deviation shows how spread out the numbers are in a data set.
    • A large deviation from the mean suggests the data is very varied.
    • The teacher calculated the deviation of each student's score from the class average.
What does "deviation" mean? | whatsthatwordmean | whatsthatwordmean