Calculating ranges and quartiles

Range and quartiles, as well as variance and standard deviation, are considered measures of dispersion. As the name suggests, these are all ways to find out how dispersed or spread out your data is. Is your data random and widely spread, or are the points tightly clustered around the mean? Not only are these values used in more advanced calculations but they are also very useful in and of themselves. If you recall, several of these were common in EDA because it is basic information that has many uses.

Ranges

A range is the simplest measure of dispersion. The idea is simply to know how far spread your dataset is. This is designed to be quick and easy, but not the most useful measure. The steps are as follows:

1. Arrange values in ascending or descending order.
2. Identify the minimum and maximum values.
3. Subtract the minimum from the maximum.

Let’s look at an example. You are hired by a small chicken farm and you are tracking...