AHS STATISTICS
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18 November 2023
Measures of Skewness and Measures of Kurtosis
Measures of Dispersion
The understanding gleaned from numerous scenarios shows that while the central figures in various data sets might be identical, the range of values often varies. Simply identifying a central value doesn't provide insights into the distribution or spread of the data. As a result, we've developed specific metrics to numerically describe this data spread, which are termed as measures of dispersion.
Some definitions for measures of dispersion:
Properties of Measures of Dispersion:
- It should be rigidly defined.
- It should be easy to calculate and easy to understand.
- It should be based on all the observations.
- It should be amenable to further mathematical treatment.
- It should be affected as little as possible by fluctuations of sampling.
Different types of measures of dispersion:
- Range
- Interquartile range and quartile deviation
- Mean deviation
- Median absolute deviation
- Variance
- Standard deviation and
- Coefficient of variation
Range: The range of a distribution is calculated by subtracting the smallest observation from the largest one. If in a set of data, 'A' represents the highest value and 'B' is the lowest, then the range can be defined as the difference between the maximum (X_max) and minimum (X_min) values, which is Range=Xmax−Xmin=A−B.
Quartile Deviation: The Interquartile range, often abbreviated as 'Q', is computed as Q=1/2(Q3−Q1), where Q1and Q3 denote the first and third quartiles of the distribution, respectively.
While the Interquartile range is more informative than the basic range because it incorporates 50% of the data, its reliability is limited since it doesn't account for the remaining half of the data.
Mean Deviation: The Range and Quartile Deviations focus on specific positions in a data set when measuring dispersion. On the other hand, the Mean Deviation considers all data points. It represents the average of the absolute differences between each value and a chosen central measure, typically the mean, median, or mode.
Sheppard's Correction for Moments:

Diagrammatic and Graphical Representation
Diagrams give a bird's eye view of complex data. It has long lasting impression and easy to understand even by a common man. It saves time and labor and also facilitate comparison. The One-dimensional diagrams are simple bar diagram, multiple bar diagram, sub-divided or component bar diagram, percentage bar diagram. The Two-dimensional diagrams are rectangle, circles and pie diagrams. The Three-dimensional diagrams are cube, cylinder and sphere. The Non-dimensional diagram are pictograms.
- Bar diagram
- Multiple Bar diagram
- Deviation bar diagram
- Duo-directional bar diagram
- Paired bar diagram
When two related factors having different units of measurements are to be displayed for comparison in various periods or places, paired bar diagrams are suitable. In this diagram usually, the periods or places are shown in a strip and horizontal bars for each factor are drawn to the right and left of the vertical strip or vertical bars are drawn below and above the horizontal strip.
- Sliding bar chart
- Broken bar diagram
- Line diagram
- Pie-chart
- Histogram
- Frequency polygon
- Frequency curve
- Graph
- Ogive curve
- Lorenz curve
Measures of Skewness and Measures of Kurtosis
Measures of Skewness To say, skewness means 'lack of symmetry'. We study skewness to have an idea about the shape of the curve...
