Past JEE Main Entrance Papers

Overview

In earlier classes, you have studied measures of central tendency such as mean, mode, median of ungrouped and grouped data. In addition to these measures, we often need to calculate a second type of measure called a measure of dispersion which measures the variation in the observations about the middle value- mean or median etc.

This chapter is concerned with some important measures of dispersion such as mean deviation, variance, standard deviation etc., and finally analysis of frequency distributions.

Measures of dispersion

  • Range: The measure of dispersion which is easiest to understand and easiest to calculate is the range. Range is defined as:
    Range \(=\) Largest observation – Smallest observation
  • Mean Deviation
    • (i) Mean deviation for ungrouped data:
      For \(n\) observation \(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n\), the mean deviation about their mean \(\bar{x}\) is given by
      \(\operatorname{M.D}(\bar{x})=\frac{\left|x_i-\bar{x}\right|}{n} \dots(1)\)

                  Mean deviation about their median M is given by
                  \(\text { M.D }( M )=\frac{\left|x_i- M \right|}{n} \dots(2)\)

  •  
    • (ii) Mean deviation for discrete frequency distribution
      Let the given data consist of discrete observations \(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n\) occurring with frequencies \(f_1, f_2, \ldots, f_n\), respectively. In this case
      \(
      \begin{aligned}
      & \operatorname{M.D}(\bar{x})=\frac{f_i\left|x_i-\bar{x}\right|}{f_i}=\frac{f_i\left|x_i-\bar{x}\right|}{ N } \dots(3)\\
      & \operatorname{M.D}( M )=\frac{f_i\left|x_i- M \right|}{ N } \dots(4)
      \end{aligned}
      \)
      where \(N =f_i\).
    • (iii) Mean deviation for continuous frequency distribution (Grouped data).
      \(
      \begin{aligned}
      & \operatorname{M.D}(\bar{x})=\frac{f_i\left|x_i-\bar{x}\right|}{ N } \dots(5)\\
      & \operatorname{M.D}( M )=\frac{f_i\left|x_i- M \right|}{ N } \dots(6)
      \end{aligned}
      \)
      where \(x_i\) are the midpoints of the classes, \(\bar{x}\) and M are, respectively, the mean and median of the distribution.
  • Variance : Let \(x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n\) be \(n\) observations with \(\bar{x}\) as the mean. The variance, denoted by \(\sigma^2\), is given by
    \(
    \sigma^2=\frac{1}{n}\left(x_i-\bar{x}\right)^2 \dots(7)
    \)
  • Standard Deviation: If \(\sigma^2\) is the variance, then \(\sigma\), is called the standard deviation, is given by
    \(
    \sigma=\sqrt{\frac{1}{n}\left(x_i-\bar{x}\right)^2} \dots(8)
    \)
  • Standard deviation for a discrete frequency distribution is given by
    \(
    \sigma=\sqrt{\frac{1}{N} \quad f_i\left(x_i-\bar{x}\right)^2} \dots(9)
    \)
    where \(f_i^{\prime}\) ‘s are the frequencies of \(x_i^{\prime} s\) and \(N ={ }_{i=1}^n f_i\).
  • Standard deviation of a continuous frequency distribution (grouped data) is given by
    \(
    \sigma=\sqrt{\frac{1}{N} \quad f_i\left(x_i-\bar{x}\right)^2} \dots(10)
    \)
    where \(x_i\) are the midpoints of the classes and \(f_i\) their respective frequencies. Formula (10) is same as
    \(
    \sigma=\frac{1}{N} \sqrt{ N f_i x_i^2-\left(f_i x_i\right)^2} \dots(11)
    \)
  • Another formula for standard deviation :
    \(
    \sigma_x=\frac{h}{N} \sqrt{ N \quad f_i y_i^2-\left(f_i y_i\right)^2} \dots(12)
    \)
    where \(h\) is the width of class intervals and \(y_i=\frac{x_i- A }{h}\) and A is the assumed mean.

Coefficient of variation:

  •  It is sometimes useful to describe variability by expressing the standard deviation as a proportion of mean, usually a percentage. The formula for it as a percentage is
    \(
    \text { Coefficient of variation }=\frac{\text { Standard deviation }}{\text { Mean }} \times 100
    \)

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