Dear Vp_help,

I am not even understand the given information. what is the meaning of "the geographic distribution of office buildings"? I guess-density of office buildings? Would you help me ? Thanks a lot

"8.What typically has a greater standard deviation in a city, the geographic distribution of office buildings or the geographic distribution of residential buildings?"

key given by the book:" Residential buildings because they are typically scattered over a larger area"

The standard deviation measures how closely grouped a set of data are -
In this case, they talk about geographic distribution. Thus, a low standard deviation would be representative of a bunch of dots on a map that were tightly grouped together, and a larger standard deviation would be representative of a bunch of dots on a map that were scattered more widely.

If we were to calculate this, we would use the average location and then calculate distance from each dot to the average / central location and then go from there -
Thus, since the residential buildings are spread over a wider area (think urban sprawl here) and the office buildings are usually clumped together in a smaller area, we'd have a greater SD for the residences.

Hope this helps,

Veritas Help

Many thinks for your very clear interpreting.