UBIDS

TITLE: EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS

CODE: EDF 205
CREDIT: 2
lecturer: Hissan Yunus

Measures of dispersion/variability
● Measure of dispersion is about the spread a data.
● This is the extent to which the values of data are dispersed.
● Dispersion is also known as spread, scatter or variability.

● For example: consider the following two data sets:

School X 8 9 18 35 33 24 18
School Y 17 18 20 25 24 21 20

● Which of them is more spread than the other?

 Measures of dispersion

● Measures of dispersion that are commonly used are

1. range
2. interquartile range
3. variance
4. standard deviation
5. coefficient of variation

1. The range

• The range of a set of numbers is the difference between the largest and the
smallest numbers of the set.

• The range for ungrouped data is defined by

Range = Largest value (max) – Smallest value (min)

• Find the range for the data set:40, 10, 20, 30, 35, 40, 50, 60
Range = Largest value – Smallest value
= 60 – 10 = 50
 2. Interquartile range
• Quartiles are measures that divides data into four parts.

• The interquartile range is the difference between the third quartile and first
quartile.

Interquartile range = third quartile – first quartile

= Q3 – Q1

Example:

Suppose you have the math test results for a class of 15 students, find the
interquartile range 91 95 54 69 80 85 88 73 71 70 66 90 86 84 73

3. The variance
•
 Variance for group data

4. Standard deviation

•
 Standard deviation for group data
•

Examples

1. Find the population variance and the standard deviation for the given
data set: 20, 30, 15, 20, 25, 10

2. Find the sample variance and the standard deviation for the given
sample: 3, 5, 7, 9, 11
 •
Solution to 1

x
20 0 0
30 10 100
15 -5 25
20 0 0
25 5 25
10 -10 100
sum 250

Example

Find the variance and the standard deviation for the following frequency
distribution of a sample.
Class Frequency
5–9 2
10 – 14 4
15 – 19 7
20 – 24 3
25 - 29 1
30 - 34 3
Total 20
Solution
Class f x
5–9 2 7 -11.5 132.25 264.5
10 – 14 4 12 -6.5 42.25 169
15 – 19 7 17 -1.5 2.25 15.75
20 – 24 3 22 3.5 12.25 36.75
25 - 29 1 27 8.5 72.25 72.25
30 - 34 3 33 13.5 182.25 546.75
Total 20 1105

Solution cont.

•
 5. Coefficient of variation
•

Examples
•
 Assignment (15 in a group)

1. The daily sale of sugar in a certain grocery shop is given below. The average
daily sale is 78kg. Calculate the standard deviation and variance.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

75kg 120kg 12kg 50kg 70.5kg 140.5kg

Measures of skewness
● Skewness is the degree to which the shape of a distribution depart from normal
or symmetry.
● It is the measure of the departure from symmetry of a distribution.
● It is about how dispersed the mean is with respect to the mode.
Computing coefficient of skewness
•