Basic Summary Statistics

Abstract

This chapter includes the basic measures of summary statisticsStatistics, namely measures of central tendencyCentral tendency, measures of dispersionDispersion, measures of skewnessSkewness, and measures of kurtosisKurtosis. These summary measures of descriptive statisticsDescriptive statisticscharacterize the underlying features of dataData. The measures of central tendency include arithmetic meanArithmetic mean, medianMedian, and modeModewith examples, advantages and disadvantages of the measures are highlighted. The measures of dispersion are discussed along with their properties. The measures of dispersion include rangeRange, varianceVariance, standard deviationStandard deviation, coefficient of variationCoefficient of variation, and interquartileQuartilerangeInterquartile range. In statisticsStatisticsand biostatistics, the first measure, central tendency or location, provides the central value around which all other values in the data set are located. In other words, the measure of central tendency provides the most important representative value of the data set. The dispersion quantifies or measures the variability in the data where variability between values of the data or difference between each value and the measure of central tendency may reflect how scattered the data are from a central value or what extent in variation among values of the data is there. The third measure is used to know whether there is symmetry from the central value or there exists asymmetry from the central value. The fourth measure indicates whether the data are more concentrated with high peak, low or normal peaks, or frequencies indicating the extent of concentration of values.