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A.Range: The simplest of our methods for measuring dispersion is range. Range is the
difference between the largest value and the smallest value in the data set. While being simple
to compute, the range is often unreliable as a measure of dispersion since it is based on only two
values in the set.
A range of 50 tells us very little about how the values are dispersed.
Are the values all clustered to one end with the low value (12) or the high value (62) being an
outlier?
Or are the values more evenly dispersed among the range?
Sample form:
The population form should be used unless you know a random sample is being analyzed.
B. Standard Deviation: Standard deviation is the square root of the variance. The formulas
are:
subtract the mean, , from each of the values in the data set,
square the result
add all of these squares
and divide by the number of values in the data set.
(Additional)
The mean absolute deviation is the mean (average) of the absolute value of the difference
between the individual values in the data set and the mean. The method tries to measure the
average distances between the values in the data set and the mean.
Quartiles (4 regions)
The quartiles divide the data into 4 equal regions. Instead of dividing by 100 in step 2, divide by
4.
Note: The 2nd quartile is the same as the median. The 1st quartile is the 25th percentile, the
3rd quartile is the 75th percentile.
The quartiles are commonly used (much more so than the percentiles or deciles). The TI-82
calculator will find the quartiles for you. Some textbooks include the quartiles in the five number
summary.