Measures of Dispersion and Location

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 Completes the picture of
summarizing datasets

Measures of dispersion
Overview measure the degree of
variability present

Composed of the range,

variance, standard
deviation, and
coefficient of variation
 Difference between
the highest and
lowest values of a
dataset

Range
Simplest measure
among the
measures of
dispersion
 Most desirable measure of
dispersion

Takes the mean as a reference point

Variance
Average of the squared deviations
from the mean

The need to square the deviations

arise from the fact that the sum of
the deviations from the mean is
equal to zero
 • Expressed as the square of the standard
deviation, or:
• Statisticians proved that using “n – 1”
Variance instead of “n” yields a better estimate
of the population variance σ2

% !
∑ "#$ (𝑥" − 𝑥)
̅
𝑠! =
𝑛−1
 • The square of a unit is abstract in many
circumstances
Standard • Square root of the variance, or

Deviation ∑%"#$ 𝑥"!−

(∑%"#$ 𝑥" )!
𝑠= 𝑛
𝑛 −1
 • Used when the units being compared
are different (e.g. height and weight)
Coefficient • A measure of relative dispersion that
of expresses the standard deviation as a
percentage of the mean
Variation 𝑠
𝐶𝑉 = × 100%
𝑥̅
 Can help locate where the variable

Measures is in a set of observations

of
Location

Location of a variable relative to the

measurements of other variables in
the same classification
 Percentile – one of the 99 values
of a variable that divides the
distribution line into 100 equal
parts

Measures Decile – one of the 9 values of a

variable that divides the
of distribution line into 10 equal
Location parts

Quartile – one of the 3 values of

a variable that divides the
distribution line into 4 equal
parts
 • Do the percentiles, deciles, and
Question quartiles have independent
computations?
 D1-D10 is equivalent
to P10, P20, P30,
P40, …, P100
Equalities
Q1-Q4 is equivalent
to P25, P50, P75,
and P100
Thank you for
listening!

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