Measures of

Variation
B-324
Aragon, Prince Allen
Arcangel, Flitzer Glenn
Bernabe, Kristian
Caspe, Phamela Jane
Dichoso, Lhen

Topics
Introduction and Information
The Range
The Inter-Quartile Range
The Semi-Interquartile Range or Quartile Deviation
The Mean Deviation or Average Deviation
The Variance
The Standard Deviation

Introduction
and
Information
measures of variationQuantities that express the amount of variation in
arandom variable(comparemeasures of location). Variation is sometimes
described asspreadordispersionto distinguish it from systematic trends or
differences. Measures of variation are either properties of aprobability
distributionor sample estimates of them.
Therangeof a sample is the difference between the largest and smallest
value. Theinterquartile rangeis potentially more useful. If the sample is
ranked in ascending order of magnitude two values ofxmay be found, the first
of which is exceeded by 75% of the sample, the second by 25%; their
difference is the interquartile range. An analogous definition applies to a
probability distribution.

Thevarianceis the expectation (or mean) of the square of the difference

between arandom variableand its mean; it is of fundamental importance
in statistical analysis. The variance of a continuous distribution with mean

The variance of a discrete distribution

The sample variance of a sample ofnobservations with meanxx is
and is denoted bys2. The value (n 1) corrects forbias.
Thestandard deviationis the square root of the variance, denoted by
(for a distribution) ors(for a sample). The standard deviation has the
same units of measurement as the mean, and for a normal
distributionabout 5% of the distribution lies beyond about two standard
deviations each side of the mean. The standard deviation of the
distribution of an estimated quantity is termed thestandard error.
Themean deviationis the mean of the absolute deviations of the random
variable from the mean.

The Range
The Range is the simplest to compute, is the difference between
the largest and the lowest value of numerical data.
The Range for :
Ungrouped data is obtained by finding the difference between
the largest value and the lowest value.
Grouped data is determined by subtracting the lower
boundary of the lowest class interval from the upper boundary
of the highest class interval of a frequency distribution.
The class boundaries are considered the true limits.

The Range
Example 1: (Ungrouped Data)
The scores obtained by 10 students in History Class are 87,80,78,93,85,75,90,79,98,76.
Find the range.
Solution:
R = HV-LV
= 98-75
R = 23
Example 2: (Grouped Data)
Find the range of a given frequency distribution whose highest class interval is 98-94 and
lowest class interval is 60-65.
Solution:
R = UB(hci) LB (lci)
= 98.5-59.5
R = 39

The Inter-Quartile Range

We learned in the preceding chapter that the quartile divides the
distribution numerical data into 4 equal parts. The first or lower
quartile lies on the 25% of the total number of values, while the
third or the upper quartile is on the 75%.

The quartile range (IQR) is found by finding the difference

between the values of the third quartile (Q3) upper and the first
quartile (Q1) or the lower quartile.

we have
IQR = Q3 Q1

With an Even Sample Size:

For the sample (n=10) the median diastolic blood pressure is
71 (50% of the values are above 71, and 50% are below).The
quartiles can be determined in the same way we determined
the median, except we consider each half of the data set
separately.
There are 5 values below the median (lower half), the middle
value is 64 which is the first quartile.There are 5 values
above the median (upper half), the middle value is 77 which is
the third quartile.The interquartile range is 77 64 = 13; the
interquartile range is the range of the middle 50% of the data.

With an Odd Sample Size:

When the sample size is odd, the median and quartiles are determined in the same
way.Suppose in the previous example, the lowest value (62) were excluded, and the
sample size was n=9. The median and quartiles are indicated below.

When the sample size is 9, the median is the middle number 72.The quartiles are
determined in the same way looking at the lower and upper halves, respectively. There
are 4 values in the lower half, the first quartile is the mean of the 2 middle values in
the lower half ((64+64)/2=64). The same approach is used in the upper half to
determine the third quartile ((77+81)/2=79).

 What is the Inter-Quartile for the following set of numbers:

13,18,6, 20, 25, 11, 9, 18, 3, 30, 16, 9, 8, 23, 26, 17
Q1=9

Q2=16

Q1 is the mean of 9 and 9

= (9+9)/2

Q3=21.5
=9

Q2 is the mean of 16 and 17 = (16+7)/2 = 16

Q3 the mean of 20 and 23

= (20+23)/2 = 21.5

The Semi-Interquartile Range or Quartile

Deviation
Indicates the variation or dispersion of the values covering the
middle 50% of the distribution of the data.
It is found by getting half of the value or distance between the
third quartile or upper quartile and the first quartile or lower
quartile.
Appropriate measure of variation only if the median is the one
that is used as the measure of central tendency, and specially
if the distribution is skewed.

The Mean Deviation or Average

Deviation
Takes into account the Deviations of the individual values from
the mean.
Calculate using the absolute values.

THE MEAN DEVIATION OR AVERAGE DEVIATION

:
mber of Cellphone units sold by an Gadget store for a 10-day period are: 7,10,8,13,8,12,5,13,9 an
AGE

ABSOLUTE VALUES OF DEVIATIONS FROM

THE MEAN

(x)

|x-|

10

11

12

13

n = 10

|x-|=27

The Variance
The use of the absolute values for the mean deviation is particularly
done to avoid having negative deviations.
Two most important measures of variability, called the variance and its
corresponding square root.
The variance is defined as the average of the squared deviations from
the mean.
The square root of this variance is known as the standard deviation.

The Standard Deviation

The most important measure of variation.
We will be able to determine the Position of the scores in a
frequency distribution in relation to the mean.
A standard deviation of a small value means that the values,
in a distribution are scattered or spread out near the mean
and vice versa.

THE VARIANCE
Example:
The 10 sample data, showing values under x-x and (x-x)
x =x
n
= 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 x= 90
10
10
5
x=9
And the variance,
S = (x-x)
n-1
= 81.5
10-1
S = 9.05

THE STANDARD DEVIATION

S=
=
S=3

x-

(x-)

-4.5

20.25

-3.5

12.25

-2.5

6.25

8
8

-1.5
-1.5

2.25
2.25

9
9

-0.5
-0.5

0.25
0.25

9
9
10
10

-0.5
-0.5
+1.5
+1.5

0.25
0.25
2.25
2.25

11
11
12
12

+2.5
+2.5
+3.5
+3.5

6.25
6.25
12.25
12.25

13
13
n = 10
n = 10

+4.5
+4.5

20.25
20.25

) = 81.5