Chapter 2 Measures of Dispersion
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Measures of dispersion in mathematics refer to statistical
measures that describe the spread or variability of a dataset. While measures
of central tendency (like mean, median, and mode) give you an idea about the
typical or central value of a dataset, measures of dispersion provide insight
into how spread out the data points are from that central value.
Common measures of dispersion include:
1. Range: The difference between the
maximum and minimum values in a dataset.
2. Variance: The average of the squared
differences from the mean. It measures how far each number in the set is from
the mean.
3. Standard Deviation: The square root of the
variance. It's a widely used measure because it's in the same units as the
original data and gives more weight to values that are farther from the mean.
4. Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD): The average of the absolute
differences between each data point and the mean.
5. Interquartile Range (IQR): The difference between the
third quartile (Q3) and the first quartile (Q1). It's a measure of the
dispersion of the middle 50% of the data.
These measures help to understand the variability within a dataset, which is crucial for making statistical inferences and drawing conclusions about the data.