Biostatistics

MEASURES OF DISPERSION
Knowing the central tendency of distributions is helpful, but not
sufficient. It is also important to know whether the data are tilted
or not. to be exactly the same (homogeneous) or significantly
different.
The dispersion of a set of observations refers to the variety that
they exhibit. A measure of dispersion conveys information
regarding the amount of variability present in a set of data. The
amount of dispersion may be small when the values, though
different, are close together.
Note: If all the values are the same, there is no dispersion; if they
are not all the same, dispersion is present in the data.
To describe variance, measures of variance have been
developed. The most common metrics out of these are
1-Range 2-Variance 3-Standard Deviation
1-Range
The range is the difference between the largest and smallest
value in a set of data. Mathematically the range R given by
R = XL – XS
Where XL and XS are largest and smallest values of the random
variable X.
Characteristic the range:
1- The usefulness of the range is limited.
2- It takes into account only two values causes it to be a poor
measure of dispersion.
3- The main advantage in using the range is the simplicity of its
computation.
A- If the data is Ungrouped.
Ex: find the range.
X= 1,5,8,9,30
Solution:

R= XL –XS = 30- 1= 29
Ex: find the range.
X= 5, 8, 11, 15, 20
R= XL –XS = 20 - 5= 15
B- If the data is Grouped.
R= XU- XL
Where: XU: Upper value
XL: lower value
Ex: find the range.
X
30-38
38-46
46- 54
54-62
62-70
70-78
78-86

Solution:

R= XU- XL = 86- 30= 56

2- Variance
It is one of the measures of dispersion, and the most widely used
in applied areas, and it expresses the mean of the squares of the
deviations of the values from their arithmetic mean.
Note: The value of the variance is always positive, the closer
the variance value is to zero, the more homogeneous the data.
First: Population variance: If we have readings about all of the
population vocabulary, let it be x1, x2, ..., xN: The population
variance, denoted by the symbol (σ2 sigma), is computed using
the following equation in the case of Ungrouped data:

 2

( X  X )
N

However, when the data of a sample are used to estimate the

variance of the population from which the sample was drawn,
the population variance estimate is computed instead:

2 ∑( )
S=
Characteristic the Variance
1- It is therefore easy to see that the variance can be described
as the average squared deviation of individual values from the
mean of that set.
2- It is easy to imagine that if we compute the difference of
each data point in the distribution from the mean value, half of
the differences would be positive and half would be negative,
resulting in a sum that would be zero.
Ex: Find The Variance for the sample.
Xi= 3, 5, 6, 2, 4
Solution:

∑( )
S2=

x= = =4

n= 5
Xi xi- x (xi- x) 2
3 3-4= -1 1
5 5-4= 1 1
6 6-4= 2 4
2 2-4= -2 4
4 4-4= 0 0
20 0 ∑10

2 ∑( )
S=

S2 = = 2.5

3-Standard Deviation
When we wish to express this concept in terms of the original
units, therefore, is not an appropriate measure of dispersion. To
obtain a measure of dispersion in original units, we merely take
the square root of the variance. In general, the standard
deviation of a sample is given by

standard deviation= √
Ex: Find the Standard Deviation for the same example as before
 S= √2.5 = 1.581
Secondly: variance of classified data for the population, We use
the equation:
∑ ( )
σ 2=
∑

Variance of classified data for the sample, We use the equation:

∑ ( )
S2 = (∑ )

Ex: find the standard deviation.

Percent Cumulative
Class Interval Frequency
Percent
20-22 5 0.1 0.1
22-24 10 0.2 0.3
24-26 20 0.4 0.7
26-28 10 0.2 0.9
28-30 5 0.1 1

Solution:

Class Frequency Mid ∑xi fi xi-x ( − ) fi( − )

Interval Fi xi
(3)- 25=
steps (1) (2) (1)*(2)=(3) (4)2=(5) (1)*(5)=(6)
(4)
20-22 5 22+20/2=21 105 21-25=-4 16 5*16=80
22-24 10 23 230 -2 4 40
24-26 20 25 500 0 0 0
26-28 10 27 270 2 4 40
28-30 5 29 145 4 16 80
50 1250 0 ∑240
 ∑
x= = = 25
∑

∑ ( )
S2 = (∑ )
= = 4.8

S= √4.8= 2.2