Which measure of spread is defined as the difference between the highest and lowest values in a distribution?

• A. Range
• B. Interquartile Range
• C. Standard Deviation
• D. Variance

Answer: (A)

Range is simply largest minus smallest. It captures how spread out the data are by using the extremes, giving a direct sense of the overall extent of variation in the distribution. The interquartile range focuses on the middle 50% and ignores the extreme values, the standard deviation measures how far data typically deviate from the mean, and variance is the squared form of that spread. Therefore, the difference between the highest and lowest values is the range.