CHAPTER

13
Statistics

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Section13.2 Measures of Dispersion

Copyright © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

The Range

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The Range
To measure the spread or dispersion of data, we must
introduce statistical values known as the range and the
standard deviation.

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Example 1 – Find a Range
Find the range of the numbers of ounces dispensed by
Machine 1 in Table 13.5.

Soda Dispensed (ounces)

Table 13.5

Solution:
The greatest number of ounces dispensed is 10.07 and the
least is 5.85. The range of the numbers of ounces
dispensed is 10.07 – 5.85 = 4.22 oz. 5
The Standard Deviation

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The Standard Deviation
The range of a set of data is easy to compute, but it can be
deceiving. The range is a measure that depends only on
the two most extreme values, and as such it is very
sensitive. A measure of dispersion that is less sensitive to
extreme values is the standard deviation.

The standard deviation of a set of numerical data makes

use of the amount by which each individual data value
deviates from the mean. These deviations, represented by
, are positive when the data value x is greater than
the mean and are negative when x is less than the mean
. The sum of all the deviations is 0 for all sets of
data.
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The Standard Deviation
This is shown in Table 13.6 for the Machine 2 data of
Table 13.5.

Soda Dispensed (ounces) Machine 2:Deviations from the Mean

Table 13.5 Table 13.6

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The Standard Deviation
Because the sum of all the deviations of the data values
from the mean is always 0, we cannot use the sum of the
deviations as a measure of dispersion for a set of data.
Instead, the standard deviation uses the sum of the
squares of the deviations.

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The Standard Deviation
Most statistical applications involve a sample rather than a
population, which is the complete set of data values.
Sample standard deviations are designated by the
lowercase letter s.

In those cases in which we do work with a population, we

designate the standard deviation of the population by ,
which is the lowercase Greek letter sigma.

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The Standard Deviation
We can use the following procedure to calculate the
standard deviation of n numbers.

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Example 2 – Find the Standard Deviation

The following numbers were obtained by sampling a

population.
2, 4, 7, 12, 15
Find the standard deviation of the sample.

Solution:
Step 1: The mean of the numbers is

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Example 2 – Solution cont’d

Step 2: For each number, calculate the deviation between

the number and the mean.

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Example 2 – Solution cont’d

Step 3: Calculate the square of each of the deviations in

Step 2, and find the sum of these squared
deviations.

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Example 2 – Solution cont’d

Step 4: Because we have a sample of n = 5 values, divide

the sum 118 by n – 1, which is 4.

Step 5: The standard deviation of the sample is .

To the nearest hundredth, the standard deviation is
s = 5.43.

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The Variance

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The Variance
A statistic known as the variance is also used as a
measure of dispersion. The variance for a given set of data
is the square of the standard deviation of the data. The
following chart shows the mathematical notations that are
used to denote standard deviations and variances.

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Example 5 – Find the Variance
Find the variance for the sample given earlier in Example 2.

Solution:
The standard deviation which we found in Example 2 is
.

The variance is the square of the standard deviation. Thus

the variance is

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