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Measures of Variability

Measures of variability describe how spread out data is in a dataset. The main measures discussed are range, standard deviation, and variance. Range is defined as the difference between the largest and smallest values. Standard deviation measures how far values are from the average. Variance estimates how far values are spread from the mean and is the expected value of the squared deviations from the mean. The coefficient of variation measures dispersion relative to the mean and allows comparison between datasets.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
103 views1 page

Measures of Variability

Measures of variability describe how spread out data is in a dataset. The main measures discussed are range, standard deviation, and variance. Range is defined as the difference between the largest and smallest values. Standard deviation measures how far values are from the average. Variance estimates how far values are spread from the mean and is the expected value of the squared deviations from the mean. The coefficient of variation measures dispersion relative to the mean and allows comparison between datasets.

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Elma rejano
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Measures of Variability

A measure of variability is a summary statistic that represents the amount of dispersion in a dataset.
This is where we will look at measures of variability, which are statistical procedures to describe how spread out the data is.
They are:
 Range: defined as a single number representing the spread of the data
 Standard deviation: defined as a number representing how far from the average each score is
 Variance: defined as a number indicating how spread out the data is
Range
The range of a dataset is the difference between the largest and smallest values in that dataset. For example, in the two
datasets below, dataset 1 has a range of 20 – 38 = 18 while dataset 2 has a range of 11 – 52 = 41. Dataset 2 has a broader
range and, hence, more variability than dataset 1. Range has a simple and easy to understand purpose as well: to quickly
and easily inform us on how wide (no pun intended) the scores are. If we're doing a study and using a sample, we need to
know how representative of the population our sample is.

Variance
Variance is the expected value of the squared variation of a random variable from its mean value, in probability and
statistics. Informally, variance estimates how far a set of numbers (random) are spread out from their mean value.

The value of variance is equal to the square of standard deviation, which is another central tool.
Variance is symbolically represented by σ2, s2, or Var(X).
The formula for variance is given by: Var (X) = E [( X – [latex]\mu[/latex])2]

Standard deviation
Standard Deviation is a measure which shows how much variation (such as spread, dispersion, spread,) from the mean
exists. The standard deviation indicates a “typical” deviation from the mean. It is a popular measure of variability because it
returns to the original units of measure of the data set. Like the variance, if the data points are close to the mean, there is a
small variation whereas the data points are highly spread out from the mean, then it has a high variance. Standard deviation
calculates the extent to which the values differ from the average. Standard Deviation, the most widely used measure of
dispersion, is based on all values. Therefore, a change in even one value affects the value of standard deviation. It is
independent of origin but not of scale. It is also useful in certain advanced statistical problems.

Coefficient of variation

The coefficient of variation (relative standard deviation) is a statistical measure of the dispersion of data points around the
mean. The metric is commonly used to compare the data dispersion between distinct series of data. Unlike the standard
deviation that must always be considered in the context of the mean of the data, the coefficient of variation provides a
relatively simple and quick tool to compare different data series.

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