What does a lower standard deviation indicate about a data set?

A lower standard deviation indicates that the data points are consistently close to the mean. This means that there is less variability among the data points; they tend to cluster around the average value rather than being widely dispersed. When standard deviation is low, it suggests that most of the data values fall within a narrow range near the mean, which signifies a high level of consistency among the values in the data set.

In contrast, a higher standard deviation would imply that the data points are more spread out from the mean, reflecting greater variability in the dataset. Thus, a low standard deviation is an indicator of a tightly grouped set of data points around the central point, providing insights into the uniformity of the data.