Measures of Variation

Introduction

Events of nature always vary from time to

time. People keep on changing places, motion,
physical appearance, skin reaction to different
chemicals, height, weight, hair color, eye color,
ideas, and even values in life.
Usually, the heights of a group of people with
the same race tend to converge to a certain
common value.
Introduction

Example:
The mean height of Filipino males is
approximately 5 feet and 6 inches then this
means that most Filipino adults have heights
that are clustering about this value.
The extent of the clustering of the heights of
the Filipino males about a central value is
known as variation.
Introduction

The measures of variation enable us to know

how varied the observations are, whether there
are extreme values in the distribution, or
whether the values are very close to each
other.
Introduction

If the measure is zero, it means that there is

no variation at all. The observations are all
alike, or homogeneous. Otherwise, they are
heterogeneous.
Introduction
The common measures of variation are the:
Range(R)
Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD)
Quartile Deviation(QD)
Percentile Range(PR)
Variance
Standard Deviation(SD)
Coefficient of Variation(CV).
Measure of Variation

Range
simplest form of measure of variation of a
distribution
subtract the lowest score from the highest score
Measure of Variation

If the size of the population or sample is to

large, range is not an excellent measure of
variation because it considers the highest and
the lowest values and does not tell anything
about the values between them.
Measure of Variation

Mean Absolute Deviation

subtract the mean score from each raw score
then using the absolute values of the
differences, get the sum of the results, then
divide this sum by , the total number of cases.
Measure of Variation

, for ungrouped data

, for grouped data

Measure of Variation

Quartile Deviation
one-half the difference of the lower and upper
quartile
deviation in the middle 50% of the distribution

, for both ungrouped and grouped

data
Measure of Variation

Percentile Range
the difference between the percentile and
the percentile
Measure of Variation

Variance
the average of the squares of the distance
each value is from the mean
considers the deviation of each observation
from the mean
to obtain the variance, compute the deviation
from the mean of each raw score and then,
square the deviations from the mean and add
them and finally, divide the resulting sum by ,
the total number of cases.
Measure of Variation

For ungrouped data:

, population variance
, sample variance
Note, except that when specified that the
population variance is to be used, we always
use the sample variance formula in the
examples and exercises throughout the course.
Measure of Variation

For grouped data

, for population variance
, for sample variance
Measure of Variation

Standard deviation (SD)

the square root of the variance

Coefficient of Variation (CV)

the ratio of the standard deviation to the
mean
Examples:

Find the measures of spread or dispersion

of the following data:
a. Scores of 14 students in a STAT quiz.
22 25 22 20 23 24 23 21 20
22 20 28 29 30
Examples:

Find the measures of variations of the following

data:
b. Heights of the TB patients of Hospital Z
Height in cm Frequency
170-179 5
160-169 12
150-159 20
140-149 28
130-139 15
120-129 5