Question

While finding the relative error in a measurement, why do we square the difference and then find the mean and then it's root? Couldn't we simply find the mean of the difference without squaring it?

Answer 1

The root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) or root-mean-square error (RMSE) (or sometimes root-mean-squared error) is a frequently used measure of the differences between values (sample and population values) predicted by a model or an estimator and the values actually observed. The RMSD represents the sample standard deviation of the differences between predicted values and observed values. These individual differences are called residuals when the calculations are performed over the data sample that was used for estimation, and are called prediction errors when computed out-of-sample. The RMSD serves to aggregate the magnitudes of the errors in predictions for various times into a single measure of predictive power. RMSD is a measure of accuracy, to compare forecasting errors of different models for a particular data and not between datasets, as it is scale-dependent.

RMSD is the square root of the average of squared errors. The effect of each error on RMSD is proportional to the size of the squared error; thus larger errors have a disproportionately large effect on RMSD. Consequently, RMSD is sensitive to outliers