This is a micro blog this week, because next week we get into measures of variation which is a dry subject and will challenge my creative ability. As we continue our trek into statistics and how to interpret them, there is a very specific area that I want you to pay attention to, variation. The reason variation is so important is that it tells you why something is different and how that matters to the data set as a whole. It also provides you the knowledge of what the data won’t be able to tell you because of the interference the variation causes. This is important because when you interpreting data understanding the limitations is almost more important than understanding what is being told to you.
Range
The first thing to consider is range. Range will tell you the difference between the most obvious observation and the smallest one. This is important because this is where you identify your outliers (variables that are outside the norm, think of road work on a delivery path or a maternity event as an obvious observation). A large range would be the maternity event; it’s so big there is no way to avoid noticing it. A small range would be a traffic event, it may have impact but the impact will not be evenly distributed and it may or may not impact the final result.
There is a measurement range that is good for a sample size of 2, it’s called the inter-quartile range. For a bigger sample stick to standard deviation; Standard deviation tells you the average number of times a variation occurs from the mean.
By all means as usual this is not a step by step approach to understanding variation, but it is enough of a foundation to have a conversation with your belt about the metrics and what they mean to your organization and its strategic goals. If you need help starting this conversation, give us a call and we will be happy to get you started.
