Measures of Dispersion

23.03.2019
 Intro
• In statistics, a central tendency (or measure of central
tendency) is a central or typical value for a probability
distribution. It may also be called a center or location of
the distribution.
• In statistics, dispersion (also called as variability, scatter,
or spread) is the extent to which distribution is
stretched or squeezed. Common examples of measures
of statistical dispersion are the variance, standard
deviation, and inter-quartile range.
 Definition
• Measures of dispersion are descriptive
statistics that describe how similar a set of
scores are to each other
– The more similar the scores are to each other, the
lower the measure of dispersion will be
– The less similar the scores are to each other, the
higher the measure of dispersion will be
– In general, the more spread out a distribution is,
the larger the measure of dispersion will be

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 Measures of Dispersion
• Which of the
distributions of scores
has the larger 125
100
dispersion? 75
50
25

The upper distribution 0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

has more dispersion

because the scores 125

100

are more spread out 75

50

That is, they are less similar to 25

each other 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

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 Measures of Dispersion
• There are three main measures of dispersion:
– Variance
– standard deviation

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 Variance
• Variance is the expectation of the
squared deviation of a random variable from
its mean. Informally, it measures how far a set
of (random) numbers are spread out from
their average value.

 X   2

2 
N

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 Standard Deviation
• When the deviate scores are squared in variance,
their unit of measure is squared as well
– E.g. If people’s weights are measured in pounds, then
the variance of the weights would be expressed in
pounds2 (or squared pounds)
• Since squared units of measure are often
awkward to deal with, the square root of variance
is often used instead
– The standard deviation is the square root of variance

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 Standard Deviation
• Standard deviation = variance
• Variance = standard deviation2

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Standard Deviation for Discrete Frequency data
Calculation of Mean and S.D. with Assumed Mean
Short-cut and step deviation method