Error bars can denote which of the following measures of variability?

Error bars can denote which of the following measures of variability?

• A. Median
• B. Standard Deviation
• C. Mode
• D. Interquartile range

Answer: (B)

Error bars convey how much data vary around a central value. The standard deviation is the typical measure of spread around the mean, so the error bars show how far individual observations tend to lie from that mean. This lets you gauge how reliable the mean is as a summary of the data. Median and mode describe the center of the data, not the spread, so they aren’t what error bars represent. Interquartile range does capture variability, but the conventional choice for error bars in many plots is standard deviation, making it the best answer here.

Error bars convey how much data vary around a central value. The standard deviation is the typical measure of spread around the mean, so the error bars show how far individual observations tend to lie from that mean. This lets you gauge how reliable the mean is as a summary of the data. Median and mode describe the center of the data, not the spread, so they aren’t what error bars represent. Interquartile range does capture variability, but the conventional choice for error bars in many plots is standard deviation, making it the best answer here.