Ogives, variance and standard deviation, the shape of a distribution, and spotting outliers.
Practise Statistics in the app →
What gets asked
- Draw or read an ogive and take the median and quartiles from it.
- Calculate the variance and standard deviation of ungrouped data.
- Say whether data is symmetric or skewed, and in which direction.
- Identify outliers and comment on them in context.
You must be able to
- An ogive climbs through cumulative counts: read positions on the count axis first.
- Standard deviation is the square root of the mean of the squared deviations.
- Mean above median suggests a right skew; the box plot tells the same story.
- Fences at 1,5 IQR beyond the quartiles mark off the outliers.
Traps that cost marks
- Reading the median from the data axis instead of the halfway count. Find n over 2 on the cumulative axis, then trace across and down.
- Averaging the deviations without squaring them. Plain deviations cancel to zero - square first, average, then root.
- Calling the maximum an outlier automatically. Test it against the upper fence; a large value can still be ordinary.
Worked example
Find the standard deviation of .
- Mean . Deviations: .
- Squares: ; mean of squares .
- .