A biologist did an experiment to test whether the nocturnal

A biologist did an experiment to test whether the nocturnal ant Myrmecia was able to navigate by using the stars. In the experiment, conducted in the lab, artifical light was used to mimic the stars. The experiment tested whether an ant followed a leftward path or a rightward path (the rightward path was the correct path) in response to star orientation. At the end of the experiment the distance travelled along one direction was measured. Distances could range from + 150 cm (right) to - 150 cm (left). The biologist computed the standard deviation of the distances for a number of ants, finding it to be -32 cm. What do we know?

Solution

we know that the calculation is wrong since the standard deviation cannot be negative. The standard deviation measures the variation (deviation) from the mean so you can interpret it as a distance measure.