Statistical Analysis: Microsoft® Excel 2010, Video Enhanced Edition

3. Variability: How Values Disperse

IN THIS CHAPTER

Measuring Variability with the Range 62

The Concept of a Standard Deviation 64

Calculating the Standard Deviation and Variance 68

Bias in the Estimate 74

Excel’s Variability Functions 75

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 ...