MEASURES OF DISPERSION (PART 2) CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER OUTLINE
▪Measures of Dispersion Concepts
▪Range
▪Inter-quartile Range
▪Variance
▪Standard Deviation
VARIANCE
▪It is defined as the average of the squared deviations.
▪It involves measuring the distance between each score and
the mean.
▪The larger the variance is, the more the scores deviate, on
average, away from the mean.
▪The smaller the variance is, the less the scores deviate, on
average, from the mean.
VARIANCE (FORMULA)
VARIANCE
▪The variance formula tells us to subtract the mean from
each score.
▪This difference is called deviate or deviation.
▪The deviate tells us how far a given score is from the
typical, or average, score.
WHEN TO USE A POPULATION OR SAMPLE
VARIANCE?
▪Calculate the population variance if:
(1) you have the entire population or
(2) you have a sample of a larger population, but you are
only interested in this sample and do not wish to
generalize your findings to the population.
▪If all you have is a sample, but you wish to make a
statement about the population variance from which the
sample is drawn, you need to use the sample variance.
VARIANCE (EXAMPLE)
The heights of the dogs (at the shoulders) are: 600mm,
470mm, 170mm, 430mm and 300mm. Find the variance.
VARIANCE (SOLUTION)
 STANDARD DEVIATION
▪It is the square root of the variance.
▪The most important and widely used measure of dispersion.
▪It should be used with interval-ratio variables but is often used
with ordinal-level variables.
▪The lower the std. dev., the more consistent the data set is. Since
it is the square root of the variance, the unit of the std. deviation
is the same as the unit of the scores.
▪It can be used to determine how much of the data is near the
mean.
STANDARD DEVIATION (FORMULA)
CALCULATOR METHOD OF COMPUTING THE STD.
DEVIATION
STANDARD DEVIATION (EXAMPLE)
Two bowlers have the scores given below:
Katie’s Scores: 189 146 200 241 231
Mike’s Scores: 235 201 217 168 186
a. Compare the two bowlers using the mean.
b. Compare the two bowlers using the standard deviation.
STANDARD DEVIATION (SOLUTION)
Using Calculator Method:
a. Mean of Katie’s Score = 201.4
Mean of Mike’s Score = 201.4
Analysis: Using the mean, it can be noticed that both bowlers
will have the same performance.
b. Standard Deviation of Katie’s Score = 37.65
Standard Deviation of Mike’s Score = 26.10
Analysis: By taking a look at the standard deviation, it can
be seen that Mike is a more consistent bowler as compared to
Katie.