Compare these two sets of net weights:

Production line 1: 13, 13, 14, 14, 14, 14, 15, 15, 16, 17 mean = 14.5

Production line 2: 12, 13, 13, 14, 14, 14, 15, 15, 17, 18 mean = 14.5

#11 What do you notice in comparing the two sets of weights, something not shown by the mean?

The range is one of several measures of the dispersion or variability of the data.

The symbol for range is R. range = maximum value - minimum value

Looking at the data from the production lines, the range of production line 1 is 17 oz. - 13 oz. = 4 oz. R = 4 oz.

The range of production line 2 is R = _________ .

The range does reveal a difference between the two lines not seen in their means. Line two appears to have more variability than line one, and we can quantify the difference with the range.

There is no separate calculator key for R probably because R is easy to calculate. The method for finding the range is subtract the low measurement from the high measurement. In the Excel computer spreadsheet, range is given by =max( ) – min( ).

The range is easy to calculate, but it only uses two data points, so it loses information contained in the rest of the data.

In the salary data used previously, the range is misleading because one salary is considerably higher than the others. Outliers can result in the range being misleadingly large.

Salaries and wages of each person at one business

$22,000

25,760

28,900

31,400

31,400

37,320

44,500

44,500

56,100

59,200

143,800

#11.1 What is the range of the salaries? In what respect does it fail to represent the salary structure of the company?