Relationship To The Arithmetic Mean and The Standard Deviation
If is the arithmetic mean and is the standard deviation of a population or a waveform then:
From this it is clear that the RMS value is always greater than or equal to the average, in that the RMS includes the "error" / square deviation as well.
Physical scientists often use the term "root mean square" as a synonym for standard deviation when referring to the square root of the mean squared deviation of a signal from a given baseline or fit. This is useful for electrical engineers in calculating the "AC only" RMS of a signal. Standard deviation being the root mean square of a signal's variation about the mean, rather than about 0, the DC component is removed (i.e. RMS(signal) = Stdev(signal) if the mean signal is 0).
Read more about this topic: Root Mean Square
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