ENGINEERING PROBABILITY AND

STATISTICS (3-0)

GS-301 (T)

Engr. Dr. Naveed Husnain

Department of Mechanical Engineering

University College of Engineering & Technology
Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan
1.4 Measures of Variability (Dispersion or Variation):
•The variation or dispersion in a set of data refers to how spread
out the observations are from each other.

The variation is small when the observations are close

together. There is no variation if the observations are the
same.
•Some measures of dispersion are range, variance, and
standard deviation
•These measures are designed to give some quantitative
measures of the variability in the data.
The Sample Variance (S2):
Let x1 , x2 , , xn be the observations of the sample. The
sample variance is denoted by S2 and is defined by:
n
2
 ( xi  x)
2 ( x1  x) 2  ( x2  x) 2    ( xn  x) 2 (unit)2
S  i 1 
n 1 n 1

n
where x   xi / n is the sample mean.
i 1

Note:
(n 1) is called the degrees of freedom (df) associated with the
sample variance S2.
 The Standard Deviation (S):
The standard deviation is another measure of variation. It is
the square root of the variance, i.e., it is:
n
2
 ( xi  x)
S  S2  i 1
(unit)
n 1
Example:
Compute the sample variance and standard deviation of the
following observations (ages in year): 10, 21, 33, 53, 54.
Solution:
n=5
n 5
 xi  xi
10  21  33  53  54 171
x  i 1  i 1    34.2 (year)
n 5 5 5
n 5
2 2
 ( xi  x)  ( xi  34.2)
S 2  i 1  i 1
n 1 5 1


10  34.2 2  21  34.2 2  33  34.22  53  34.2 2  54  34.22
4
1506.8
  376.7 (year)2
4
The sample standard deviation is:

S  S 2  376.7  19.41 (year)

* Another Formula for Calculating S2:

n 2
2
 xi  nx
S2  i 1
(It is simple and more accurate)
n 1
For the previous Example,

xi 10 21 33 53 54  xi  171

x 2
i
100 441 1089 2809 2916  x i2  7355

n 2
x 2
i  nx
7355  534.2
2
1506.8
S2  i 1
   376.7 (year)2
n 1 5 1 4
 Homework to do

Solve exercise from question 1.7 to 1.12.