Inter-quantile width
inter-quantile distance, inter-quantile range
The difference between the lower and upper quantiles of the same level (cf. Quantile). Let be a strictly-monotone continuous distribution function and let
be an arbitrary number,
. The inter-quantile distance at level
is defined as
, where
and
are the solutions of
and
, respectively. Inter-quantile distances at well-chosen levels
are used in mathematical statistics and probability theory to characterize the dispersion (scatter) of probability distributions. E.g., the difference
, corresponding to
, has the name inter-quartile distance, and in the case of a normal distribution it is equal to
(where
is the natural measure of dispersion, called the standard deviation); half the inter-quartile (inter-decile) is called the probable deviation (probable error or semi-inter-quartile distance). If
or
, the inter-quantile distance is called the inter-sixtile or inter-tentile, respectively.
References
[1] | G.U. Yale, "An introduction to the theory of statistics" , Griffin (1916) |
Inter-quantile width. Encyclopedia of Mathematics. URL: http://encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=Inter-quantile_width&oldid=15850