measure of dispersion

(NL: spreidingsmaat)

A measure of dispersion expresses the extent to which values in a sample or population differ from each other.

There are several ways to determine a measure of dispersion, we will use only a few of them in this course. The measures of dispersion discussed are only suitable for quantitative variables.

• variance and standard deviation
• interquartile range and range

Together with a measure of central tendency, a measure of dispersion forms a way of expressing the characteristics of observations for a variable.