Determine whether the range or interquartile range best describes the spread of a dataset.

Question

The times (in seconds) for a high school boys' 100 meter race: 1.0: 11.2 11.7 12.2 12.4 12.6 12.8 12.9 13 13.3 13.8 14.2 14.3 14.3 16.5 17.6 18.0

Answer 1

In this case, the interquartile range best describes the spread of the dataset. This is because the interquartile range measures the spread of the middle 50% of the data, which can be useful in identifying the central tendency and variability of a dataset while minimizing the influence of extreme values.