Statistical Analysis: Microsoft® Excel® 2013

3. Variability: How Values Disperse

In This Chapter

Measuring Variability with the Range

The Concept of a Standard Deviation

Calculating the Standard Deviation and Variance

Bias in the Estimate

Excel’s Variability Functions

Chapter 2, “How Values Cluster Together,” went into some detail about measures of central tendency: the methods you can use to determine where on a scale of values you can find the value that’s the most typical and representative of a group. Intuitively, an average value is often the most interesting statistic, certainly more interesting than a number that tells you how values fail to come together. But understanding their variation gives context to the central tendency of the values.

For example, people tend to be more ...