What are the common measures of dispersion?

What are the common measures of dispersion?

• A. Range
• B. Range and Standard Deviation
• C. Variance and Skewness
• D. Mean and Median

Answer: (B)

Dispersion describes how spread out the data are around the center. The most common measures you’ll see are the range and the standard deviation. The range is simply the difference between the largest and smallest values, giving a quick sense of overall spread. But it can be heavily affected by extreme values. The standard deviation (and its square, the variance) measures how far each data point tends to lie from the mean, taking every value into account and in the same units as the data, which usually makes it the more informative measure of spread for a dataset. Skewness, in contrast, is about the asymmetry of the distribution, not how spread out it is. Mean and median describe central tendency, not dispersion. So combining range with standard deviation captures the typical ways we talk about how data vary.

Dispersion describes how spread out the data are around the center. The most common measures you’ll see are the range and the standard deviation. The range is simply the difference between the largest and smallest values, giving a quick sense of overall spread. But it can be heavily affected by extreme values. The standard deviation (and its square, the variance) measures how far each data point tends to lie from the mean, taking every value into account and in the same units as the data, which usually makes it the more informative measure of spread for a dataset.

Skewness, in contrast, is about the asymmetry of the distribution, not how spread out it is. Mean and median describe central tendency, not dispersion. So combining range with standard deviation captures the typical ways we talk about how data vary.