>What I don't get is the squaring of the difference. The following answer is about standard deviation but the desired properties from squaring is also relevan

>What I don't get is the squaring of the difference. The following answer is about standard deviation but the desired properties from squaring is also relevant to your question: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/118/why-square-the-difference-instead-of-taking-the-absolute-value-in-standard-devia http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/118/why-square-the-...