Range

Range refers to the difference between each series’ minimum and

maximum values. The range offers us a good indication of how
dispersed the data is, but we need other measures of variability to
discover the dispersion of data from central tendency measurements.
A range is the most common and easily understandable measure of
dispersion. It is the difference between two extreme observations of
the data set. If X max and X min are the two extreme observations then

Range = X max – X min

Quartile Deviation
The quartiles divide a data set into quarters. The first quartile, (Q1) is
the middle number between the smallest number and the median of
the data. The second quartile, (Q2) is the median of the data set. The
third quartile, (Q3) is the middle number between the median and the
largest number.

Quartile deviation or semi-inter-quartile deviation is

Q = ½ × (Q3 – Q1)

Skewness is a measure of symmetry, or more precisely, the lack of symmetry. A

distribution, or data set, is symmetric if it looks the same to the left and right of the
center point.

Kurtosis is a measure of whether the data are heavy-tailed or light-tailed relative to

a normal distribution. 

Skewness means lack of symmetry. In mathematics, a figure is called symmetric if there exists a
point in it through which if a perpendicular is drawn on the X-axis, it divides the figure into two
congruent parts i.e. identical in all respect or one part can be superimposed on the other i.e mirror
images of each other. In Statistics, a distribution is called symmetric if mean, median and mode
coincide. Otherwise, the distribution becomes asymmetric. If the right
Standard Deviation
A standard deviation is the positive square root of the arithmetic
mean of the squares of the deviations of the given values from their
arithmetic mean. It is denoted by a Greek letter sigma, σ. It is also
referred to as root mean square deviation. The standard deviation is
given as

σ = [(Σi (yi – ȳ) ⁄ n] ½ =  [(Σ i yi 2 ⁄ n) – ȳ 2] ½

For a grouped frequency distribution, it is

σ = [(Σi  fi (yi – ȳ) ⁄ N] ½ = [(Σi fi  yi 2 ⁄ n) – ȳ 2] ½

The square of the standard deviation is the variance. It is also a

measure of dispersion.

σ 2 = [(Σi (yi – ȳ ) / n] ½ =  [(Σi yi 2 ⁄ n) – ȳ 2]

For a grouped frequency distribution, it is

σ 2 = [(Σi  fi (yi – ȳ ) ⁄ N] ½ = [(Σ i fi  xi 2 ⁄ n) – ȳ 2].

If instead of a mean, we choose any other arbitrary number, say A,

the standard deviation becomes the root mean deviation.