THE FIBONACCI SEQUENCE
MEASURES OF DISPERSION
These measures describe the extent
of “scattering” of individual items
about the average or point of central
location. These are the range,
standard deviation and variance.
THE RANGE – is the difference
between the greatest data value and
the least data value.
EXAMPLE:
1. Find the range of the numbers of ounces dispensed by Machine 1
in the table below:
Find the range of the numbers of ounces
dispensed by Machine 2 in the above
table.
SOLUTION: 1. The greatest number of
ounces dispensed is 10.07 and the least
is 5.85. The range of the numbers of
ounces is 10.07 – 5.85 = 4.22 oz.
2. The highest number of ounces
dispensed is 8.03 and the lowest is 5.85.
The range of the numbers of ounces is
10.07 – 7.95 = 2.12 oz.
THE STANDARD DEVIATION
– The range of a set of data is easy to compute, but it
can be deceiving. The range is a measure that
depends only on the two most extreme values, and
as such it is very sensitive.
A measure of dispersion that is less sensitive to
extreme values is the standard deviation. The
standard deviation of a set of numerical data
makes use of the amount by which each individual
data value deviates from the mean.
Procedure for computing a standard deviation:
Determine the mean of the n numbers.
For each number, calculate the deviation
(difference) between the number and the mean
of the numbers.
Calculatethe square of each deviation and find
the sum of these squared deviations.
Ifthe data is a population, then divide the sum
by n. If the data is a sample, then divide the
sum by n – 1.
Find the square root of the quotient in Step 4.
EXAMPLE:
1. The following numbers were
obtained from a population:
2, 4, 7, 12, 15, find the standard
deviation of the said numbers.
2. A student has the following quiz
scores: 5, 8, 16, 17, 18, 20.
Find the standard deviation for this
sample of quiz scores.
MEASURES OF RELATIVE POSITION
Z - SCORES
– The z-score for a given data value x is the number of
standard deviations that x is above or below the mean of the
data.
To explain further, consider an Internet site that offers movie
downloads. An estimate of the mean time to download a
movie is 12 minutes, with a standard deviation of 4 minutes.
But when you download this movie, the download takes 20
minutes, which you think is an unusually long time for the
download. On the other hand, when your friend downloads
the movie, it takes only 6 minutes
EXAMPLE: Use a student’s z-score for two
tests to determine how well the student did on
each test in comparison to the other students
1. John Robin has taken two tests in his math
class. He scored 72 on the first test, for which
the mean of all scores was 65 and the standard
deviation was 8. He received a 60 on a second
test, for which the mean of all scores was 45 and
the standard deviation was 12. In comparison to
the other students, did John Robin do better on
the first test or the second test?
2. A consumer group tested a
sample of 100 light bulbs. It
found that the mean life
expectancy of the bulbs was 842
h. with a standard deviation of
90. One particular light bulb
from the DuraBright Company
had a z-score of 1.2. What was
the life span of this light bulb?
EXAMPLE: Use medians to find the quartiles of a data set.
The following table lists the calories per 100 milliliters of 25 popular sodas. Find the
quartiles for the data.
SOLUTION: Use the 3 steps in finding the quartiles.
Step 1: Rank the data as shown in the following
table.
BOX-and-WHISKERS PLOTS
– it is sometimes called a box plot
and is often used to provide a
visual summary of a set of data.
A box-and-whisker plot shows the
median, the first and third
quartiles, and the minimum and
maximum values of a data set.
Summary:
Plain information about the measures of central tendency of a given set of data does
not suffice to fully describe the data. Additional information such as the amount of
variation among data is important. Thus, we need to talk about measures of
variability. The measure of the center of the distribution is of little help in describing
and comparing these two sets of data. By getting the average distance of each item
from the center of the distribution, the group can be described more completely and,
likewise, similarities and differences can be easily identified. There are several
measures of variability or dispersion. Among them are the range, variance and
standard deviation.
Range is the difference between the highest and the lowest values. This is the
simplest but the most unreliable measure of variability since it uses only two values in
the distribution.
Variance is the average of the squared deviation from the mean while the standard
deviation is the square root of the average deviation from the mean, or simply the
square root of the variance.
Thank you
and
God Bless Us all !
