Merits or Uses
- It is easiest to calculate and simplest to understand even for a beginner.
- It is one of those measures which are rigidity defined.
- It gives us the total picture of the problem even with a single glance.
- It is used to check the quality of a product for quality control. Range plays an important role in preparing R- charts, thus quality is maintained.
- The idea about the price of Gold and Shares is also made taking care of the range in which prices have moved for the past some periods.
- Meteorological Department also makes forecasts about the weather by keeping range of temp.
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Demerits or Limitations or Drawbacks
- Range is not based on all the terms. Only extreme items reflect its size. Hence range cannot be completely representative of the data as all other middle values are ignored.
- Due to above reason range is not a reliable measure of dispersion.
- Range does not change even the least even if all other, in between, terms and variables are changed.
- Range is too much affected by fluctuation of sampling. Range changes from sample to sample. As the size of sample increases range increases and vice versa.
- It does not tell us anything about the variability of other data.
- For open-end intervals, range is indeterminate because lower and appear limits of first and last interval are not given.
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