Foundation Mathematics
Topic 8 – Lecture 2: Understanding Dispersion
The Variance
The Standard Deviation
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.2
Scope and Coverage
This topic will cover:
• Recognition of the variance within the distribution of
data and its importance in statistics
• Recognition of the standard deviation within the
distribution of data and its importance in statistics
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.3
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this topic students will be able to:
• Calculate the variance of a set of data
• Calculate the standard deviation of a set of data
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.4
The Variance - 1
• We present the difference between the individual value and the
arithmetic mean in straight line brackets x xa modulus.
called
• We must remember to ensure that the product of our calculation
within the modulus remains positive.
• To get around this we can square the value of x - that is to
x
multiply the value by itself which will always give a positive
number.
• If we do this we can replace the straight line (modulus) brackets
with the more conventional curved brackets ( )
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.5
The Variance - 2
• The resulting measure that is achieved when we square
x to as the variance.
values of x - is referred
• For ungrouped data it can be represented by the formula
x x
2
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.6
The Variance - Example
• Consider the following data set 8, 10 ,12, 14, 16, 18, 20 , 22
• The first thing to do is to calculate the arithmetic mean using x
• Once we have this we can apply the following formula to calculate our variance
x (x x) ( x x )2
x x
2
8 -7 49
10 -5 25
n
12 -3 9
14 -1 1 = 168 = 21
16 1 1 8
18 3 9
20 5 25
22 7 49
Total 168
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.7
The Variance – Grouped Data
• The same approach can be applied to calculating the variance for group data. This time (as before) we need to find the mid point of our class.
• Constructing our table we get
Hours worked Frequency
0<h 10 3
10 <h 20 6
20 <h 30 11
30 <h 40 15
40 <h 50 12
50 <h 60 7
60 <h 70 6
Midpoint x Frequency f fx x2 fx2
5 3 15 25 75
15 6 90 225 1350
25 11 275 625 6875
35 15 525 1225 18375
45 12 540 2025 24300
55 7 385 3025 21175
65 6 390 4225 25350
f = 60 2220 fx2 = 97500
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.8
The Variance – Example Continued
• From this table we can now extract the information we
need to put into our formula
fx
2
2
fx
S 2
f
f
• We then get the following
97500
37 256hours
2
60
• The mean is calculated using x
fx
37
f
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.9
The Standard Deviation - 1
• Although the variance allows us to analyse data in an
effective way, it is presenting data in squared units as the
variance is expressed as s2.
• It is necessary to present our data more often than not in
single units.
• To achieve this we need to introduce the standard deviation
as a way of demonstrating the relationship between the
arithmetic mean and individual values.
• The calculation of the standard deviation is very simple and
is the square root of the variance.
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.10
The Standard Deviation - 2
• In our previous example of how we calculated the variance
of the hours worked we established that this = 256 hours
• The standard deviation of this data set is or 16 hours
256
• The main properties of the standard deviation are as follows
- It is based on all the values in the distribution and so is more
comprehensive than dispersion measures based on quartiles
- It is suitable for further statistical analysis
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.11
Coefficient of Variation
• The coefficient of variation compares the dispersion of
two distributions and is simply calculated by the
following formula
Standard deviation
Coefficient of variation =
Mean
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Understanding Dispersion 2 Topic 8 - 2.12
Topic 8 – Understanding Dispersion 2
Any Questions?
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