deviation

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of deviating or turning aside.
2. n. An abnormality; a departure: "Vice was a deviation from our nature” ( Henry Fielding).
3. n. Deviant behavior or attitudes.
4. n. Divergence from an accepted political policy or party line.
5. n. Deflection of a compass needle caused by local magnetic influence, especially on a ship.
6. n. Statistics The difference, especially the absolute difference, between one number in a set and the mean of the set.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of deviating; a turning aside from the way or course.
2. n. Departure from a certain standard or from a rule of conduct, an original plan, etc.; variation; specifically, obliquity of conduct.
3. n. In com., the voluntary departure of a ship without necessity, or without reasonable cause, from the regular and usual course of the specific voyage insured. In the law of insurance it includes unreasonable delay on the voyage, as well as beginning an entirely different voyage.
4. n. In astronomy, the oscillatory motion of a plane; especially, in the Ptolemaic system, the oscillation of the plane of the orbit of a planet, which was supposed to account for certain inequalities in the latitude.
5. n. If the law of error be stated by the equation , more conveniently written , then is called by Pearson the standard deviation. The square root of the average of the squared departures from the mean in both directions is a measure of variability called the standard deviation.

Wiktionary

1. n. The act of deviating; a wandering from the way; variation from the common way, from an established rule, etc.; departure, as from the right course or the path of duty.
2. n. The state or result of having deviated; a transgression; an act of sin; an error; an offense.
3. n. contract law The voluntary and unnecessary departure of a ship from, or delay in, the regular and usual course of the specific voyage insured, thus releasing the underwriters from their responsibility.
4. n. Absolute Deviation The shortest distance between the center of the target and the point where a projectile hits or bursts.
5. n. statistics For interval variables and ratio variables, a measure of difference between the observed value and the mean.
6. n. metrology The signed difference between a value and its reference value.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of deviating; a wandering from the way; variation from the common way, from an established rule, etc.; departure, as from the right course or the path of duty.
2. n. The state or result of having deviated; a transgression; an act of sin; an error; an offense.
3. n. (Com.) The voluntary and unnecessary departure of a ship from, or delay in, the regular and usual course of the specific voyage insured, thus releasing the underwriters from their responsibility.
4. n. (Statistics, Physics) the difference between an expected value of an observation or measurement and the actual value.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a turning aside (of your course or attention or concern)
2. n. the difference between an observed value and the expected value of a variable or function
3. n. deviate behavior
4. n. the error of a compass due to local magnetic disturbances
5. n. a variation that deviates from the standard or norm