MEASURES OF VARIABILITY

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CENTRAL TENDENCY AND
VARIABILITY
 Central tendency describes the central point of
the distribution, and variability describes how
the scores are scattered around that central
point.
 Together, central tendency and variability are
the two primary values that are used to
describe a distribution of scores.

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VARIABILITY
 The goal for variability is to obtain a
measure of how spread out the scores are in
a distribution.
 A measure of variability usually
accompanies a measure of central tendency
as basic descriptive statistics for a set of
scores.

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 Variability serves both as a descriptive measure and as
an important component of most inferential statistics.
 As a descriptive statistic, variability measures the degree
to which the scores are spread out or clustered together in
a distribution.
 In the context of inferential statistics, variability provides a
measure of how accurately any individual score or sample
represents the entire population.
 When the population variability is small, all of the scores
are clustered close together and any individual score or
sample will necessarily provide a good representation of
the entire set.

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On the other hand, when variability is large and
scores are widely spread, it is easy for one or
two extreme scores to give a distorted picture of
the general population.
MEASURING VARIABILITY
Variability can be measured with
the range
the interquartile range
Variance
the standard deviation.
In each case, variability is determined by measuring
distance.

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THE RANGE
The range is the total distance covered by the
distribution, from the highest score to the lowest score
(using the upper and lower real limits of the range).
It is the difference between the highest value and the
smallest value in the set
Example: Given the following sorted data, find the
range. 12,15,19,24,24,25,26,30,35,38
R=HV-LV
R=38-12
R=26
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THE INTERQUARTILE RANGE
The interquartile range is the distance covered by the
middle 50% of the distribution (the difference between
Q1 and Q3).
VARIANCE
Variance- it is the square of the standard deviation
Note: The larger the variance, the greater the
variability or the distance of scores from the mean. The
smaller the variance, the lesser the variability.

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Example: Given the scores in a 25 item Mathematics test 23, 21,
19, 18,18, 7, 15, 12, 10, 10, 8, and 7. Find the variance.
Solution:

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THE STANDARD DEVIATION
Standard deviation measures the standard distance between a score and the
mean. It is used to describe variability when the mean is used to describe the
central tendency
Note: The mean is an average of the scores in a set while the standard
deviation is a sort of average of how distant the individual scores are from the
mean
The Formula for Standard Deviation

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THE CALCULATION OF STANDARD DEVIATION CAN BE
SUMMARIZED AS A FOUR-STEP PROCESS:
1. Compute the deviation (distance from the mean) for each score.
2. Square each deviation.
3. Compute the mean of the squared deviations. For a population,
this involves summing the squared deviations (sum of squares, SS)
and then dividing by N. The resulting value is called the variance or
mean square and measures the average squared distance from the
mean.
For samples, variance is computed by dividing the sum of the
squared deviations (SS) by n - 1, rather than N. The value, n - 1,
is know as degrees of freedom (df) and is used so that the sample
variance will provide an unbiased estimate of the population
variance.
4. Finally, take the square root of the variance to obtain the
standard deviation.

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Example: Given the scores in a 25 item Mathematics test 23, 21,
19, 18,18, 7, 15, 12, 10, 10, 8, and 7. Find the variance.
Solution:

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PROPERTIES OF THE STANDARD DEVIATION
a. If a constant is added to every score in a distribution,
the standard deviation will not be changed.
b. If you visualize the scores in a frequency distribution
histogram, then adding a constant will move each
score so that the entire distribution is shifted to a new
location.
c. The center of the distribution (the mean) changes, but
the standard deviation remains the same.
d. If each score is multiplied by a constant, the standard
deviation will be multiplied by the same constant.
e. Multiplying by a constant will multiply the distance
between scores, and because the standard deviation
is a measure of distance, it will also be multiplied.
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 ACTIVITY. MEASURES OF VARIABILITY
1. The following are the response times in seconds of a smoke
alarm after release of smoke from a fixed source. Find the
range, variance, and standard deviation. 12,16, 12, 14, 19, 20,
10, 9, and 5
2. Twenty employees of a fast food chain, give a course in first
aid, obtained these scores on a test administered after the
course. Find the range, variance, and standard deviation. 10,
11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 17, 17, 19, 12, 14, 17, 19, 17, 18, 16, 15,
14, 12, and 10
3. The following are the stopping distances, for 20 drivers at 30
miles per hour. Find the range, variance, and standard deviation.
69, 67, 56, 58, 70, 55, 70, 58, 70, 75, 72, 68, 80, 74, 61, 70,
61, 65, 58, and 61

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THE COEFFICIENT OF VARIATION
 The Coefficient of Variation (CV) is a measure that
allows for the easy computation of two or more
variables measured on different scales.
 It gives the relative variability in terms of the mean
of the variable and is usually expressed in
percentage (%)
 The lower is the coefficient, the better. Thus, it will
show small variability in the data.

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Example: The weight of the girls in Grade 8 students are as follows:
37, 40, 47, 30, 37, 20, 48, 48, 49, 50, 36, 35, 28, and 39. Find the
CV.

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 Activity. Measures of Variability
1. A high school teacher at a small private school assigns
trigonometry practice problems to be worked via the net.
Students must use a password to access the problems and the
time of log-in and log-off are automatically recorded for the
teacher. At the end of the week, the teacher examines the
amount of time each student spent working the assigned
problems. The data is in minutes: 15, 28, 25, 48, 22, 43, 49,
34, 22, 33, 27, 25, 22, 20 and 39. Find the Range, Standard
Deviation, and Variance for the data.
2. Bailey has been playing golf on the weekends for the past
three years. Recently, she started keeping track of her
recorded scores. Her scores for June and July at her favorite
9-hole (par 36) golf course are as follows: 45, 49, 42, 56,
41, 36, 34, 38, 41, 40, 42, 41, 39, 38, 40, 39, 36 and 41.
Find the Range, Standard Deviation, and Variance for the
data.

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3. Midterm exam scores for a small advanced neuro
anatomy class are provided below. Scores represent
percent of items marked correct on the exam. Compare
the performance of the male from female students.
Male Students Female Students
87 85
99 98
75 80
87 85
94 96
75 78
35 45
88 80
87 82
93 91

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