LESSON 5

Measures of Spread 1

Introduction
The measure of central tendency discussed in the previous lesson gave some indication of the
general location of the sample data (mean, mode and median), but did not provide the reader
with information on the spread, variability or dispersion of the scores. Why is measure of
spread useful?
Here is an example: If we are comparing test scores for different schools, the standard
deviation will tell us how diverse the test scores are for each school. Let's say Sekolah
Kebangsaan A has a higher mean test score than Sekolah Kebangsaan B. Your first reaction
might be to say that the students at Sekolah Kebangsaan A are smarter.
But a bigger standard deviation for one school tells us that there are relatively more students
at that school scoring toward one extreme or the other. By asking a few follow-up questions
we might find that, say, Sekolah Kebangsaan As mean was skewed up because the school
district sends all of the gifted education students to Sekolah Kebangsaan A. Or that Sekolah
Kebangsaan Bs scores were dragged down because students who recently have been
"mainstreamed" from special education classes have all been sent to Sekolah Kebangsaan B.
In this way, looking at the standard deviation can help point us in the right direction when
asking why information is the way it is. The standard deviation is a number that measures
how far data values are from their mean.
The standard deviation
- provides a numerical measure of the overall amount of variation in a data set
- can be used to determine whether a particular data value is close to or far from the
mean
Measures of spread together with measures of location (or central tendency) are important for
identifying key features of a sample to better understand the population from which the
sample comes from.
However, in this lesson, we will discuss on spread measures of range and quartiles. The
fundamentals of standard deviation will be discuss in chapter 6.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
Upon the completion of this lesson, you should be able to:
a) describe the various measures of spread namely range and quartiles;
b) determine the quartiles from a given data set.


Measures of Spread
A measure of spread provides information on the spread of the data set. It also give us extra
information as to whether our measures of central tendency are a good representative of the
sample. A measure of dispersion is also useful for the purpose of comparing a few
distributions.
For example: Quiz scores of three different groups, namely Group A, Group B and Group C.
Group A: 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80

Mean, XA = 80

Group B : 78, 82, 84, 76, 81, 79, 80, 80, 83, 77

Mean, XB = 80

Group C: 75, 85, 70, 90, 68, 92, 80, 80, 70, 90

Mean, XC = 80

The mean score for each of the group is 80 as shown above. However, this score is not
enough or does not give information about how far the scores are from each other or the
mean. More is needed in the way of descriptive information about sample observations and
the measures of spread/dispersion provide some form of this additional description.
I n short, measures of spread are ways of summarizing a group of data by describing how
spread out the scores are. For example, the mean score of our 100 students may be 65 out of
100. However, not all students will have scored 65 marks. Rather, their scores will be spread
out. Some will be lower and others higher. Measures of spread help us to summarize how
spread out these scores are. To describe this spread, a number of statistics will be discuss in
this lesson.
a) range,
b) interquartile range, and
c) standard deviation.

Range
The range is a measure of spread and it tells us how much a data set is spread out or
scattered.
Range is defined as the difference between the highest and lowest values. That is:
Range = Highest value Lowest value

Example 1
Find the range of the following data set:
18 14 13 35 45
Solution:
Lowest value = 13
Highest value = 45
Range = Highest value Lowest value
= 45 13
= 32


Quartiles
If a data set of scores is arranged in ascending order of magnitude, then:
- The median is the middle value of the data set.

- The lower quartile (Q
1
) is the median of the lower half of the data set.

- The upper quartile (Q
3
) is the median of the upper half of the data set.

- The interquartile range (IQR) is the spread of the middle 50% of the data values. So:


The interquartile range is a more useful measure of spread than range as it describes the
middle 50% of the data values and thus, is less affected by outliers.

Example 2
Find the median, lower quartile, upper quartile and interquartile range of the following data
set of scores:
19 21 24 21 24 28 25 24 30
Solution
Arrange the score values in ascending order of magnitude:
19 21 21 24 24 24 25 28 30
There are 9 values in the data set.
n = 9
Median =
|
.
|

\
| +
2
1 n
th value
=
|
.
|

\
| +
2
1 9
th value
= 5
th
value
= 24
Lower quartile = ( ) 1
4
1
+ n th value
= ( ) 1 9
4
1
+ th value
= 2.5
th
value (between 2
nd
and 3
rd
)
=
|
.
|

\
| +
2
21 21

= 21
Upper quartile = ( ) 1
4
3
+ n th value
= ( ) 1 9
4
3
+ th value
= 7.5
th
value (between 7
th
and 8
th
)
=
|
.
|

\
| +
2
28 25

= 26.5

Interquartile range = Upper quartile Lower quartile
= 26.5 21
= 5.5
This means the middle 50% of the data values range from 21 to 26.5.

Example 3
Find the Upper and lower quartiles of the following set of data.
Data: 6, 47, 49, 15, 43, 41, 7, 39, 43, 41, 36
Solution
Ordered data: 6, 7, 15, 36, 39, 41, 41, 43, 43, 47, 49
- Median (Q
2
) : 41
- Upper quartile (Q
3
) : 43
- Lower quartile (Q
1
): 15
Example 4
The following data set is a list of total number of books read by class 6A for the last 12
months
34, 47, 1, 15, 57, 24, 20, 11, 19, 50, 28, 37.
Find:
a) the median
b) the range
c) the upper and lower quartiles
d) the interquartile range
Solution
a) The values in ascending order are:
1, 11, 15, 19, 20, 24, 28, 34, 37, 47, 50, 57.

Median = (12th + first) 2
= 6.5th value
= (sixth + seventh observations) 2
= (24 + 28) 2
= 26
b) Range = difference between the highest and lowest values
= 57 1
= 56
c) Lower quartile = value of middle of first half of data Q
1

= the median of 1, 11, 15, 19, 20, 24
= (third + fourth observations) 2
= (15 + 19) 2
= 17
d) Upper quartile = value of middle of second half of data Q
3

= the median of 28, 34, 37, 47, 50, 57
= (third + fourth observations) 2
= (37 + 47) 2
= 42
e) Interquartile range = Q
3
Q
1

= 42 17
= 25
These results can be summarized as follows:


Note:
- The quartiles divide the set of measurements into four equal parts. Twenty-five per
cent of the measurements are less than the lower quartile, fifty per cent of the
measurements are less than the median and seventy-five per cent of the measurements
are less than the upper quartile. So, fifty per cent of the measurements are between
the lower quartile and the upper quartile.
- The lower quartile, median and upper quartile are often denoted by Q
1
, Q
2
and Q
3
respectively.
- The median is also denoted by m.

Exercise 1
1. The variance of a sample of 169 observations equals 576. The standard deviation of
the sample equals to _______
2. A researcher has collected the following sample data. The mean of the sample is 5.
3 5 12 3 2
a) The range is _____
b) The interquartile range is ______
3. A researcher has collected the following sample data
5 12 6 8 5
6 7 5 12 4
a) The median is ______
b) The mode is ______
c) The mean is ______
d) The 50
th
percentile is ______
e) The 75th percentile is ______
f) The range is ______
4. A private research organization studying families in various countries reported the
following data for the amount of time 4-year old children spent alone with their fathers
each day.
Time with
Country fathers (minutes)
Belgium 30
Canada 44
China 54
Finland 50
Germany 36
Nigeria 42
Sweden 46
United States 42

For the above sample, determine the following measures:
a. The mean
b. The mode
c. Range
d. The 75th percentile