Chapter 3

2. MEASURES OF
DISPERSION

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Learning Objectives
At the end of this chapter, the
students will be able to:
 Explain the concept of variability
Calculate the range, interquartile
range, and quartile deviation
Calculate the mean deviation,
variance and standard deviation
2
Introduction:
The measures of central tendency, such as the
mean, median, and mode, do not reveal the
whole picture of the distribution of a data set. Two
data sets with the same mean may have
completely different spreads. The variation among
the values of observations for one data set may
be much larger or smaller than for the other data
set. (Note that the words dispersion, spread,
and variation have the same meaning.)
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Introduction …. (Continue)

Consider the following two data sets on the

ages (in years) of all workers working for

each of two small companies.

Company 47 38 35 40 36 45 39
1:

Company 70 33 18 52 27
2:
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Introduction …. (Continue)
 Thus, the mean, median, or mode by itself is usually not a sufficient

measure to reveal the shape of the distribution of a data set.

 We also need a measure that can provide some information about the

variation among data values.

 The measures that help us learn about the spread of a data set are

called the measures of dispersion.

 The measures of central tendency and dispersion taken together give

a better picture of a data set than the measures of central tendency

alone.
 This section discusses three measures of dispersion: range, variance,

and standard deviation.

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Distance measures of
Dispersion
Range

The range is the simplest measure of

dispersion to calculate. It is obtained by
taking the difference between the largest
and the smallest values in a data set.
Finding the Range for Ungrouped Data

Range = Largest value - Smallest value

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Example

Table 3.4 gives the total areas in square miles of the

four western South-Central states of the United

States.

Find the range for this data set.

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Solution
The maximum total area for a
state in this data set is
267,277 square miles, and the
smallest area is 49,651 square
miles. Therefore,
Range = Largest value -
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Range of grouped Data:

For grouped data with a frequency

distribution, the range is the difference
between the upper boundary of the
highest (UB) and the lower boundary of

the lowest class (LB).

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Example
•The below table shows the daily wages
of 80 workers in a factory. Determine
the range
Daily Class Number of
wages Boundary Workers
(RM)
10 - 19 9.5 – 19.5 6
20 - 29 19.5 – 10
29.5
30 - 39 29.5 – 30
39.5
40 - 49 39.5 – 20
49.5
50 – 59 49.5 – 10
59.5 10

60 – 69 59.5 – 4
Solution:

Range = 69.5 – 9.5

= 60

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Interquartile Range:
The interquartile range is the
difference between the third and first
quartiles in a set of data.
This measures consider the spread in
the middle fifty percent of the data;
therefore, it is not influenced by the
extreme values of the data set.
The interquartile range is obtained by
subtracting the first quartile from the
third quartile.

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Quartile deviation (Semi-interquartile range)

Another measure of distance

dispersion is the quartile
deviation. Quartile deviation is
defined as follows:

It is also frequently called semi-

interquartile range
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Example
Find the interquartile range
and quartile deviation of the
following data.

9 11 14 13 15 17 18
37 18 47 18 61 20 50

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Solution:
Ascending the data in ascending
order:
9 1 1 14 1 17 1 18 18 2 37 4 5 6
1 3 5 8 0 7 0 1

Interquartilerange =
Quartile deviation =

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Mean deviation (Average
Absolute deviation)
The mean deviation (or
average absolute deviation) is
calculated by summing up the
difference between each
observation and the mean. This
value is then divided by the
number of observations.

Where x is the observation and

n is the number of observation.
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Example:
Find the mean deviation for the following
data:
12, 6, 3, 7, 8, 10, and 11.

Solution:

=
Thus, the mean deviation is 2.45

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Population Variance and
Standard Deviation
The measurement of the distance
between the mean of a data set and
how far a data point has dispersed is
called the variance.
It is represented as “
The standard deviation measures the
spread of the statistical data.
The deviation of data from the
average position or its mean value is
measured by distribution.
The symbol “σ” represented the
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standard deviation.
Population Variance for
ungrouped data
The formula for the population variance is:

or Population variance can also be written in

a different form:
where
 = Population variance
X = observation or value,
N = Total number of observations in the
population
∑ = Sum of all values and
μ = population mean.

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Population Standard Deviation
for ungrouped data
The population standard deviation is the
square root of the variance. The symbol for
the population standard deviation is σ.

The corresponding formula for the population

standard deviation is: Or

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 Finding the Population Variance and
Population Standard Deviation:
To find the variance and standard deviation
for a data set, the following Procedure can be
used.
Step 1: Find the mean for the data.
Step 2: Find the deviation for each data
value. X − μ
Step 3: Square each of the deviations.
Step 4: Find the sum of the squares.
Step 5: Divide by N to get the variance.
Step 6: Take the square root of the variance
to get the standard deviation.

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Example

Find the variance and

standard deviation for the
following data set:
 10, 60, 50, 30, 40, 20

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Solution:

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 Population Variance and
Standard Deviation of grouped
data
For grouped data that is in the form of a
distribution of class intervals where each
class interval is represented by the
midpoint, the following formulae for
population variance can be used.

or Population variance can also be written in

a different form:

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 Example
Find the population variance and standard
deviation of the following frequency
distribution x f
0 - under 6 2
6 - under 12 4
12 - under 18 10
18 – under 24 12
24 – under 30 8
30 - under 36 4

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 Solution
X Midpoi f f.x f.x2
nt
0 - under 3 2 6 18
6
6 - under 9 4 36 324
12
12 - under 15 10 150 2250
18
18 – under 21 12 252 5292
24
24 – under 27 8 216 5832
30
30 - under 33 4 132 4356
36
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 Example …. (continue)

Population mean, = = 19.8

Variance,

= = 59.76
Standard Deviation, = 7.73

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Sample Variance and standard
deviation
Sample variance for
ungrouped data:
The variance for a sample of n
measurements is the sum of the
squared distances of
measurements from the mean
divided by (n-1). This is normally28
Sample variance for ungrouped data
(Continue)
The sample variance is
written in different forms

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Sample standard deviation for
ungrouped data
The sample standard deviation is the
square toot of the sample variance:

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Example

Find the variance and

standard deviation of the
sample data below
 1, 7, 2, 5

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