Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2006 / ib / Paper 4 / 6B / b / Solution

For a normalized wavefunction in the required operator domains and a self-adjoint operator $A$, its expectation value and standard deviation areEquivalently the squared uncertainty is $\Vert (A-⟨A{⟩}_{\psi })\psi {\Vert }^2$, which is visibly nonnegative. Since the expectation value of a self-adjoint operator is real, expansion of the square and $\int |\psi {|}^2=1$ giveFor a state not normalized to one, divide each defining expectation integral by $\int |\psi {|}^2$ before using this formula.