One of the easiest ways to assess dispersion in your data is to compare the minimum and maximum. The minimum is the smallest value in a data set, and the maximum is the largest value.

Minimum and maximum are used to calculate the range, which is a statistic that is often used to describe dispersion in data sets. The range is simply the maximum - minimum. Notice that the range is very sensitive to extreme values.

The minimum and maximum values are listed in the middle of the Graphical Summary.

For the precipitation data the minimum is 1, the maximum is 10, and the range is: 10 - 1 = 9.

Even though most of the data lies between the values of 1 and 5 (a range of 4), the extreme value of 10 results in a range of 9 for the sample.