What is Sigma? – Definition & Concept
In addition to being the 18th letter of the Greek alphabet, sigma also means ‘sum’ and ‘deviation’ in the mathematics world. Learn what each symbol looks like and how each formula works.
What is Sigma?
Sigma is the 18th letter of the Greek alphabet and is equivalent to our letter ‘S’. In mathematics, the upper case sigma is used for the summation notation. The lower case sigma stands for standard deviation. Each has its own unique formula, and yes, both the upper case and lower case look vastly different from each other.
sigma letters
Neither of them looks like our letter ‘S’, but they are both the Greek equivalent of it. If you notice, the two formulas that use these two symbols both start with the letter ‘s’.
Upper Case Sigma
The upper case sigma is used in the summation notation. This particular notation is also called sigma notation.
sigma summation
This particular formula, as its name denotes, tells you to sum up the function evaluated at particular points determined by the little numbers on top and below the big sigma. It is used to add a series of numbers.
You will most likely see this used to sum up a function evaluated at certain points. In the real world, this can be used to figure out the interest you earn over a period of time if you have money saved in an interest-bearing account at a financial institution.
When performing math problems, you will most often see this in association with functions of various types. An example is the summation of f(n) = 1/n evaluated at 1, 2, 3, and 4.
sigma summation example
The little numbers on top and below the big sigma determine the starting and ending evaluation values. You can see that we’ve plugged in the values 1, 2, 3, and 4 into the n in the formula to evaluate at each of the values and then summed it all up.
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