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Business Statistics For Dummies, 2nd Edition
book

Business Statistics For Dummies, 2nd Edition

by Alan Anderson
January 2024
Beginner content levelBeginner
400 pages
9h 3m
English
For Dummies
Content preview from Business Statistics For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4

Measuring Variation in a Data Set

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Computing variance and standard deviation

Bullet Finding the relative position of data: percentiles and quartiles

Bullet Measuring relative variation: the coefficient of variation

One of the most important properties of a data set (a sample or population) is how “spread out” the data are from the center. (Techniques for measuring the center of a data set are covered in Chapter 3.) You can use several numerical measures, known as measures of dispersion, to calculate the spread of a data set.

This chapter covers the techniques used to compute the variance and standard deviation of a sample and a population. (Samples and populations are defined in Chapter 1.) Techniques for determining the relative position of an element within a sample or a population are also explained in detail; these include percentiles and quartiles. Finally, the coefficient of variation is introduced as a measure of relative variation; this enables a direct comparison of the properties of two samples or two populations.

Thanks to the standard deviation and the mean (covered in Chapter 3), you can calculate relative variation, which has many handy applications.

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781394219926Purchase Link