Measures of Variability or Dispersion

 Range
Difference between maximum and minimum values
 Interquartile Range
Difference between third and first quartile (Q3 - Q1)
 Semi Interquartile Range
Difference between third and first quartile (Q3 - Q1)/2
 Variance
Average*of the squared deviations from the mean
 Standard Deviation
Square root of the variance

 Definitions of population variance and sample variance differ slightly .

How to calculate Variance/ standard deviation
Measures of Variability or Dispersion
 Coefficient of Dispersion
 (Q3 - Q1)/ (Q3 + Q1)
 Coefficient of Variation
(Standard Deviation/mean)* 100
 Skewness and Kurtosis
 Skewness
• Measure of asymmetry of a frequency distribution
• Skewed to left
• Symmetric or unskewed
• Skewed to right

 Kurtosis
• Measure of flatness or peakedness of a frequency distribution
• Platykurtic (relatively flat)
• Mesokurtic (normal)
• Leptokurtic (relatively peaked)
Skewness

Skewed to left
Skewness

Symmetric
Skewness

Skewed to right
Kurtosis

Platykurtic - flat distribution

Kurtosis

Mesokurtic - not too flat and not too peaked

Kurtosis

Leptokurtic - peaked distribution

Skewness
 Skewness
 Karl pearson coefficient of skewness

 Sk= (Mean- mode)/ SD= 3(Mean- Median)/SD

 If Sk= 0 symetric

 If Sk= more then +3, positively skewed

 If Sk= less then -3, negatively skewed

 Bowleys coefficient of skewness
 Sk= (Q3+Q1-2Median)/(Q3-Q1)

 If Sk= 0 symmetric
 If Sk= more then +1 positively skewed

 If Sk= less then -1 negatively skewed

Skewness
 Skewness
β1= (µ3)2 / ( µ2)3 ---Range +2 to -2

• Kurtosis
β2= (µ4) / ( µ2)2 --Range +3 to -3

 Note:- Different software uses different measure of Skewness and

Kurtosis, for example in SPSS the thumb rule is
 -1 to +1 for symmetry, less than -1 negatively skewed and more
than +1 positively skewed