How do I determine the standard deviation (stddev) of a set of values?

While the sum of squares algorithm works fine most of the time, it can cause big trouble if you are dealing with very large numbers. You basically may end up with a negative variance...

Plus, don't never, ever, ever, compute a^2 as pow(a,2), a * a is almost certainly faster.

By far the best way of computing a standard deviation is Welford's method. My C is very rusty, but it could look something like:

public static double StandardDeviation(List<double> valueList)
{
    double M = 0.0;
    double S = 0.0;
    int k = 1;
    foreach (double value in valueList) 
    {
        double tmpM = M;
        M += (value - tmpM) / k;
        S += (value - tmpM) * (value - M);
        k++;
    }
    return Math.Sqrt(S / (k-2));
}

If you have the whole population (as opposed to a sample population), then use return Math.Sqrt(S / (k-1));.

EDIT: I've updated the code according to Jason's remarks...

EDIT: I've also updated the code according to Alex's remarks...

You can avoid making two passes over the data by accumulating the mean and mean-square

cnt = 0
mean = 0
meansqr = 0
loop over array
    cnt++
    mean += value
    meansqr += value*value
mean /= cnt
meansqr /= cnt

and forming

sigma = sqrt(meansqr - mean^2)

A factor of cnt/(cnt-1) is often appropriate as well.

BTW-- The first pass over the data in Demi and McWafflestix answers are hidden in the calls to Average. That kind of thing is certainly trivial on a small list, but if the list exceed the size of the cache, or even the working set, this gets to be a bid deal.

Code snippet:

public static double StandardDeviation(List<double> valueList)
{
    if (valueList.Count < 2) return 0.0;
    double sumOfSquares = 0.0;
    double average = valueList.Average(); //.NET 3.0
    foreach (double value in valueList) 
    {
        sumOfSquares += Math.Pow((value - average), 2);
    }
    return Math.Sqrt(sumOfSquares / (valueList.Count - 1));
}

We may be able to use statistics module in Python. It has stedev() and pstdev() commands to calculate standard deviation of sample and population respectively.

details here: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-statistics-stdev/

import statistics as st print(st.ptdev(dataframe['column name']))

This is Population standard deviation

private double calculateStdDev(List<double> values)
{
    double average = values.Average();
    return Math.Sqrt((values.Select(val => (val - average) * (val - average)).Sum()) / values.Count);
}

For Sample standard deviation, just change [values.Count] to [values.Count -1] in above code.

Make sure you don't have only 1 data point in your set.