Measures of dispersion help us understand how data is spread out. Here are some important ideas:

1. Range: This shows how much the data varies. You find the range by subtracting the smallest number from the largest number.

   For example, in the set of numbers {3, 7, 5, 10}, you would calculate: $\text{Range} = 10 - 3 = 7$

2. Interquartile Range (IQR): This looks at the middle 50% of the data. To find the IQR, you subtract the first quartile (Q1) from the third quartile (Q3).

   If Q1 is 4 and Q3 is 8, then: $\text{IQR} = 8 - 4 = 4$

3. Standard Deviation: This tells us how much the data points are different from the average.

   It’s a bit more complicated, but here’s the basic idea: $\sigma = \sqrt{\frac{\sum (x_i - \mu)^2}{N}}$

   In this formula, $\mu$ is the average value, and $N$ is the number of data points.

   If the standard deviation is small, it means that most of the data points are close to the average. If it’s large, it means the data points are spread out a lot.

These tools are useful for seeing how data behaves!