Definition
When you are given various values, the range of those values is how big the difference is between the largest value and the smallest value. In other words, the range is what you get when you subtract the smallest value in the group from the largest value in the group.
Steps to Finding Range
You can easily find the range by following a series of steps.
- The first thing you want to do is to order your values from the smallest to the largest.
- Next, you take the largest value and subtract the smallest value from it.
You can follow these exact same steps for any range problem you encounter.
A simple formula for finding the range is the following.
range of value=largest value-smallest value
The formula for range.
Let's see how this formula works for two kinds of problems.
Ages of Kids
Let's go through an example to see how this works. We have the Jones family with us today and they have five kids. Nick is 5 years old, Sam is 3 years, Sarah is 2 years, Julie is 10 years old, and Zach is 12 years old. We want to find the range of the ages of the kids
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What is the range?
- Our first step is to order the ages of the kids starting from the youngest and going to the oldest. Doing this, we have 2, 3, 5, 10, and 12. Sarah is the youngest at 2 years of age and Zach is the oldest at 12 years of age.
- Our next step is to take the oldest age of 12 years and subtract the youngest age of 2 years from it. So, 12-2=10 gives us our range. 10 is the range of the ages of the kids.