Least absolute deviations

Least absolute deviations, also known as LAD, is a way of finding an answer to a math problem. It is different from other methods in that it looks at the differences between the given numbers, rather than the average of all the numbers. To illustrate this, suppose you have four numbers: 5, 10, 15, and 20. If you want to find the average, you would add all the numbers together and divide by four (50 ÷ 4 = 12.5). With LAD, however, you need to look at how far each number is different from the average. So, for each number, you would subtract 12.5 from it and take the absolute value of the difference (this means you always treat the differences as positive numbers, rather than negative or positive). So, for the four numbers given, you would end up with 2.5, 2.5, 2.5, and 7.5. The number 7.5 is the largest difference between the number and the average and this number is the LAD.