What are s² and s in statistics?

[matrix_204]

I was just wondering, this is a simple question, but i have started intro to stats, lol, but anyways i was wondering what s^2 and s is, like i was given a sample size and some observations. Now i was asked to calculate s^2 and s, how do i do that, and what is s^2 and s?

 

[jamesrc]

s is sample standard deviation and s² is sample variance. Here's one description: http://www.quickmba.com/stats/standard-deviation/. Computationally, they are only different from the population variance and standard deviaion by their denominators ((N-1) instead of N).