Using the set of data, which set has larger variance? Justify the answer without computing the variance of each set of data.

Question

Consider the following data:

Data 1 Data 2

1 14

2 14

4 15

6 15

2 16

3 13

5 12

1 13

3 14

4 15

7 13

6 11

8 17

144 14

Answer 1

Simply put we just need to know what variance is..

variance is the measure of variability and is just the square of the standard deviation of each given sample!!

So Data 1 has a 144 element term that is way farther away from the rest of the terms in the sample

Data 2 has nothing close to that large difference between its elements

So Data 1 definitely has the greater variance!