Question

The amount of money that college students spend on rent each month is usually between $300 and $600. However, there are a few students who spend $1,300. What measure of spread would be most appropriate to measure the amount of money that college students spend on rent per month?
a. median
b. range
c. standard deviation
d. interquartile range

Answer 1

The mean monthly rent and its standard deviation will be affected by the few students with a monthly rent of $1300. The mean would be significant without the outlliers. To estimate or predict the expect rent of a student, it is best to choose the value from the middle. This gives a close estimate of the likely price of the rent without being affected by the extreme rent prices paid by few students. Thus, we have interquartile range. It gives you a summary of the minimum, maximum, and average pricing from the data. The answer is D.