Merits and Demerits of Range

A. Merits or Uses:

1. It is easiest to calculate and simplest to understand even for a beginner.

2. It is one of those measures which are rigidity defined.

3. It gives us the total picture of the problem even with a single glance.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. Meteorological Dep’t. Also makes forecasts about the weather by keeping range of temp, in view.

B. Demerits or Limitations or Drawbacks:

1. 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.

2. Due to above reason range is not a reliable measure of dispersion.

3. Range does not change even the least even if all other, in between, terms and variables are changed…

4. 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.

5. It does not tell us anything about the variability of other data.

6. For open-end intervals, range is indeterminate because lower and upper limits of first and last interval are not given.