Number of goals scored in one season at Whitmore College soccer games follows:

Question

0, 0, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4

Which measure of variability—IQR or MAD— best describes the spread of the dataset?

Answer 1

In this case, the Interquartile Range (IQR) would be the better measure of variability to describe the spread of the dataset. The IQR measures the range of the middle 50% of the data, which can be useful in identifying the spread of a dataset that may have outliers or extreme values. The Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) only measures the average distance of each data point from the median, which may not provide as comprehensive of a description of the variability in this particular dataset.