MATH – 361

Introduction to Probability and Statistics

Lecture No. 10
Measures of Dispersion

Reference: Ch # 1, Sec 1.3, Text Book

No. Of Slides:25
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 Desired Learning Objectives

After this lecture students will be able to

 Understand basic concept of Dispersion

 Understand different measures of Dispersion

 Apply these measures in the fields of engineering particularly while
conducting technical investigations

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 Measures of Dispersion

 The spread or scatter of the observations/values in a sample or

in a population from one another or Mean
 The method to compute the amount of dispersion is called
Measure of Dispersion

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 Measures of Dispersion

1. Range
2. The Quartile Deviation
3. The Mean Deviation
4. Variance
5. The Standard Deviation

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 Measures of Dispersion : The Variance

Definition

 Average of the squares of deviations of all the observations from

their Mean

𝑽𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 = 𝝈𝟐

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 Measures of Dispersion : The Variance

Formula

For Ungrouped Data

σ 2
2
𝑥 − 𝑥ҧ
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎 =
𝑛

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 Measures of Dispersion : The Variance

For Ungrouped Data:

To minimize the round off errors, when the Mean is not a whole
number, another formula is used, called computational form of
variance
2 2
2
σ𝑥 σ𝑥
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎 = −
𝑛 𝑛
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 Measures of Dispersion : The Variance

Formula

For Grouped Data

σ 𝑓 𝑥 − 𝑥ҧ 2
2
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎 =
σ𝑓

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 Measures of Dispersion : The Variance

Formula

For Grouped Data (Computational Form)

2 2
2
σ 𝑓𝑥 σ 𝑓𝑥
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎 = −
σ𝑓 σ𝑓

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 Measures of Dispersion : The Variance

2 2
Procedure σ 𝑓𝑥
2
σ 𝑓𝑥
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎 = −
σ𝑓 σ𝑓
 Find sum of frequencies

 Find square of x values i.e. X2

 Find product of x with respective frequency f

 Find product of x2 with respective frequency f

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The Variance

Example : Grouped Data

X f
0 76
1 38
2 20
3 10
4 4
5 2
Total 150

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 The Variance Product of x and f

Product of x2 and f

Example : Grouped Data

X x2 f fX f X2
0 0 76 0 0
1 1 38 38 38
2 4 20 40 80
3 9 10 30 90
4 16 4 16 64
5 25 2 10 50
Total σ 𝒇 = 150 σ 𝒇𝒙 =134 σ 𝒇𝒙𝟐 =322
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 The Variance

Example : Grouped Data

2 2
σ 𝑓𝑥
2
σ 𝑓𝑥
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎 = −
σ𝑓 σ𝑓

Therefore, the variance is

2
322 134
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎2 = − = 1.35
150 150
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The Variance

Example : Grouped Data

Life No. of Bulbs

(in Hundreds of Hours) f
0–5 4
5 – 10 9
10 – 20 38
20 – 40 33
40 -60 16
 Find mid point i.e. class mark
so it can be taken as value
The Variance for x
Product of f and
Here we have x
class boundaries
Example : Grouped Data Product of f and
x2

No. of
Life Mid-point
Bulbs X2 fx fx2
(in Hundreds of Hours) x
f
0–5 4 2.5 6.25 10.0 25.0
5 – 10 9 7.5 56.25 67.5 506.25
10 – 20 38 15.0 225 570.0 8550.0
20 – 40 33 30.0 900 990.0 29700.0
40 -60 16 50.0 2500 800.0 40000.0
Total 100 2437.5 78781.25
 The Variance

Example : Grouped Data

σ 𝑓𝑥 2 σ 𝑓𝑥 2
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎 2 = σ𝑓
− σ𝑓
Therefore, the variance is
2
7878125 24375
𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎2 = −
100 100

= 193.21 hundred hours

 Variance

Example : Un-grouped Data Number of fatalities

Day
X
Sunday 4
The number of fatalities in motorway Monday 6
accidents in one week Tuesday 2
Wednesday 0
Thursday 3
Friday 5
Saturday 8
Total 28
 Variance

Example : Un-grouped Data Number of fatalities

Day
X
Sunday 4
First we find the mean of the data Monday 6
Tuesday 2
Mean is the sum of all the values divided by Wednesday 0
total number of values
Thursday 3
28 Friday 5
Implies 𝑀𝑒𝑎𝑛 = 𝑥ҧ = =4
7 Saturday 8
Total 28
 Variance

Example : Un-grouped Data

Square of the
Distance from
𝑥 ഥ
𝒙 distance from
Mean (𝒙 − 𝒙ഥ)
Mean 𝒙 − 𝒙 ഥ 𝟐
4 0 0
6 +2 4
2 –2 4
0 –4 16
4
3 –1 1
5 +1 1
8 +4 16
𝟐
σ 𝒙−𝒙 ഥ =42
 Variance

Example : Un-grouped Data

Averaging these squared deviations, the variance is given by

σ 𝑥 − 𝑥ҧ 2
2
𝑉𝑎𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎 =
𝑛
2
42
𝑉𝑎𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 = 𝜎 = =6
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 Variance

The variance has the following properties

 It is never negative since every term in the variance sum is

squared and therefore either positive or zero

 It has squared units

 Variance

Observations

 The variance is frequently employed in statistical work, but it

should be noted that the figure achieved is in ‘squared’ units of
measurement

 In the example that we have just considered, the variance has

come out to be “6 squared fatalities”, which does not seem to
make much sense!
 Variance

 In order to obtain an answer which is in the original unit of

measurement, we take the positive square root of the Variance.
The result is known as the Standard deviation

So our next topic of discussion will be “ Standard Deviation”

 Practice Problem 1

 You flip a coin 100 times and it lands on heads 44 times. You then
use the same coin and do another 100 flips. This time it lands on
heads 49 times. You repeat this experiment a total of 10 times and
get the following results for the number of heads.

44; 49; 52; 62; 53; 48; 54; 49; 46; 51

 Compute the Mean and Variance of this data set

 Practice Problem 2

 According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ten to twenty

earthworms per cubic foot is a sign of healthy soil. Mr. Green
checked the soil in his garden by digging 7 one-cubic-foot holes
and counting the earthworms. He found the following counts

4, 23, 15, 10, 8, 12, 18

 Calculate the sample variance of the numbers of earthworms per

cubic foot
 Practice Problem 3

Bridget surveyed the price of petrol at petrol stations in Cape Town

and Durban. The data, in $ per litre, are given below

Cape Town 3.96 3.76 4.00 3.91 3.69 3.72

Durban 3.97 3.81 3.52 4.08 3.88 3.68

 Find the mean price in each city and then mention which city has
the lower mean

 Which city has the more consistently priced petrol? Give reasons
for your answer
 Study Links

 https://education.ti.com/sites/US/downloads/pdf/wg_fst_lesson_01
_06.pdf

 https://www.siyavula.com/read/maths/grade-11/statistics/11-
statistics-04