Variability Metrics Secrets : Understanding Range, Variance, Standard Deviation and Co-efficient of Variation (2023)

Descriptive statistics are like the building blocks of data analysis, helping us make sense of numbers and uncover patterns. In this article, we’ll explore the concept of variability, which includes metrics like Range, Variance, Standard Deviation, and the Coefficient of Variation. We’ll break them down in simple terms, provide real-life examples, and discuss their advantages, and disadvantages, when to use, how to use them, and when not to use them.

What is Variability?

Variability is all about understanding how spread out or clustered data points are in a dataset. Imagine you’re measuring the heights of students in two different classrooms. If one class has students of similar heights, and the other has students with varying heights, you’d say the second class has higher variability.

Range

Range is the simplest measure of variability. It’s the difference between the highest and lowest values in a dataset.