In the U.S., doctors usually get suspicious when a PSA level is 4.0 ng/mL. But studies show that many men with levels well above 4.0 ng/mL do not have cancer. And many men with prostate cancer have PSA scores well below this level. There are a lot of ways to tweak the PSA test to try to get better results.
The Standard Deviation Formula. In this formula, x is the value of the mean, N is the sample size, and x i represents each data value from i=1 to i=N.. The â symbol indicates that you must add up the sum. (x 1 - x) 2 + (x 2 - x) 2 + (x 3 - x) 2 + (x 4 - x) 2 + (x 5 - x) 2. . . + (x N-x) 2.
The Range Rule. The range rule tells us that the standard deviation of a sample is approximately equal to one fourth of the range of the data. In other words s = (Maximum â Minimum)/4. This is a very straightforward formula to use, and should only be used as a very rough estimate of the standard deviation.uppose we start with the data values of 12, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 18, 20, 20, 25. These values have mean of 17 and standard deviation of about 4.1. If instead we first calculate the range of our data as 25 â 12 = 13, and then divide this number by four we have our estimate of the standard deviation as 13/4 = 3.25.