What are the measures of variability and how do I use them?
Measures of variability, such as the range, variance, and standard deviation, are types of descriptive statistics that complement the measures of central tendency in describing data sets. These measures of variability reflect how scores differ or are spread or dispersed from one another. A more precise definition is the distance or amount a score in a data set differs from the typical score in the set, usually the mean. The three most common forms of variability are the range, variance,…