MEASURES OF

DISPERSION
By:
Joan Listana
Justine Sanosa
Martin Reverente
INTRODUCTION
 The measures of central tendency are used to estimate
"normal" values of a dataset, measures of dispersion are
important for describing the spread of the data, or its
variation around a central value. Two distinct samples
may have the same mean or median, but completely
different levels of variability, or vice versa. A proper
description of a set of data should include both of these
characteristics. There are various methods that can be
used to measure the dispersion of a dataset, each with
its own set of advantages and disadvantages. We need to
know how sets of observations spread out from average.
It is quite possible to have two sets of observation with
the same mean or median that differ considerably in
variability of their measurements about the average.
MEASURES OF DISPERSION

 Range
 Variance & Standard Deviation

Relative measure of dispersion

- Coefficient of Variation
PURPOSE OF MEASURING DISPERSION

 First, it is one of the most important

quantities used to characterize a frequency
distribution.
 Second, it affords a basis of comparison
between two or more frequency
distributions.
 The study of dispersion bears its importance
from the fact that various distributions may
have exactly the same averages, but
substantial differences in their variability.
RANGE

 The simplest measure of dispersion is the

range. This can be applied to variables at or
above ordinal level. At its simplest(when the
variable is measured at ordinal level) the
range specifies “ from the least to
greatest”. When the variable is measured at
interval or ratio levels, the range is
calculated as the difference between the
largest value to the variable and the
smallest.
EXAMPLE

 For data set:

- 2, 10, 34, 5, 17, 4, 8, 10

We place the numbers in ascending order,

giving:
 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10, 19, 34

In this case we see that the range is ‘from “2”

to “34”
Range = 34 – 2 =32
ADVANTAGES &
DISADVANTAGES OF RANGE
Advantage
-Range is an extremely simple measure and
easy to calculate and interpret. It is useful
looking for out of range values
Disadvantage
-totally dependent on just two variables
VARIANCE AND STANDARD
DEVIATION
 Is the most useful measure of dispersion – its
calculation can be applied to any data
measured at interval or ratio level and it
allows us to characterize and compare
distributions straightforwardly. Standard
deviation is the positive square root of the mean-
square deviations of the observations from their
arithmetic mean.
FORMULA FOR STANDARD
DEVIATION
 Population:

 Sample:
COEFFICIENT OF VARIATION
 A coefficient of variation is computed as a
ratio of the standard deviation of the
distribution to the mean of the same
distribution.