Question

What makes the range less desirable than the standard deviation as a measure of? dispersion?

Answer 1

Given a set of numbers, the range is simply defined as the smallest number subtracted from the largest number. Thus, it is very crude measure of dispersion since it only takes into account two numbers. The standard deviation is a measure of how distant each data point is from the mean. Thus it takes into account the dispersion of all numbers in the data set, making it more desirable.