Question

Describe one way in which measures of variability are different than measures of central tendency.

Answer 1

Measures of variability are numbers that describe how much spread there is in a distribution, whereas the measures of central tendency tell us a single typical value to represent set of data.

For example, consider a student obtains marks out of 100 in 5 tests as follows: 2, 0, 3, 1, 1. The measure of variability of his test scores is small and the student is certainly consistent. But, his measure of central tendency is very small, so he has poor efficiency.