Page 30 of Campus Heat

I bit my lip, trying not to laugh because I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or making a joke.

“Define chaotic.”

He thought about it for a good long moment. “Like when a team scores forty points one week and seventy the next.”

“That,” I said, pointing the pencil at him. “Is standard deviation.”

He nodded slowly. “So being consistent means you have a low standard deviation?”

“Yes.”

He leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head. For a moment I thought he’d lift his feet too, but luckily he didn’t go that far.

“So if a player throws three hundred yards one week and ninety the next…”

“They’re unstable.”

“Or exciting.”

“Definitely unstable.”

He smirked. “That would depend on who you ask.”

I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. He was loosening up, which was more than I had hoped for when I got into this.

“In statistics, exciting usually means unreliable.”

“Wow,” he said dryly. “That feels like a personal attack.”

I ignored his comment because I thought maybe it was a good thing for him to believe that it was. Only for a little while, of course.

“Okay, the company’s average is forty-five thousand, and the standard deviation usually tells us how much above or below that the company swings on average.”

“Fifty thousand?” He asked.

“Is above average.”

“Obviously,” he said smugly.

I playfully slapped his chest because he was becoming far too cocky for his own good. If he kept messing around, he could end up missing something important.

“Thank you for that, Captain Insight. But the question is, how far above average?”

He studied it more carefully, as if it were a trick question. “Five thousand?”

“Right, so the standard deviation is five thousand.”

“So it’s one full standard deviation above the mean?”

I wanted to say no just to mess with him, but his eyes were as large as saucers, and that made it impossible for me to pull off my joke.

“Look at you, Mr. Smarty-pants.”

“I’m evolving,” he said.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” I teased.

Before I could say more, we heard a familiar voice. “There you are!” Jenna said.