descriptive statistics

• includes both measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion
• measures of dispersion- how spread out the scores are- so includes both the range and the standard deviation
• the bigger the standard deviation is- the more spread out the scores are
• the smaller the standard deviation more clustered (less spread out) the values are around the mean
• a group with a smaller SD will have more consistency within results when compared to a group with a larger SD
• the positives of SD- includes all values from a data set in its calculation, making it more sensitive than the range, the SD also provides information about the spread of scores,
• negatives of SD- extreme scores also distort the SD, The SD is significantly more difficult to calculate than the range as well