Why standard deviation as a measure of dispersion needs a mention in a dataset?

摘要

Sir, We have read with interest the article by Gupta et al., however, we have some concerns. Why standard deviation as a measure of dispersion needs a mention in a dataset? The authors have conducted a retrospective analysis of records of all patients with ruptured vertebral artery posterior inferior cerebellar artery (VA-PICA) junction aneurysms over five years and concluded that endovascular therapy of ruptured proximal PICA aneurysms is possible and safe with the use of adjuvant devices and should be considered as first line treatment. Thirteen patients who underwent endovascular treatment for ruptured saccular VA-PICA junction aneurysms were the focus of this research. My submission in this regard is that the authors have mentioned the age of 13 study subjects along with the overall mean and range of age in years. The range, inter-quartile range and standard deviation are the measures that indicate the amount of variability within a dataset. The range is the simplest measure of variability to calculate but can be misleading if the dataset contains extreme values as it is based solely on the two most extreme values within any dataset.