How to Find the Range

How do you find the range of a set of numbers? The good news is you don’t have to rearrange the whole set of numbers to find the range. You do however have to find the biggest and smallest number in the set. Let’s take a look at how to find the range.

How to Find the Range

Very simply, the range is the difference between the largest value in the set of numbers and the smallest. The only work you have to do is find the lowest and highest values, then you simply subtract the lowest from the highest. This shows us how much variation there is in the set of numbers.

It doesn’t matter how many numbers the set contains, or how many times the lowest OR highest numbers show up. Just find the highest, even if it shows up multiple times. Same for the lowest. Subtract the two and you’ve done it. One simple subtraction calculation gives you the range.

Range Example Problem

Let’s find the range of this set of data:

10, 16, 19, 21, 13, 16, 25, 29, 10, 12, 18, 16, 20, 27, 11, 15

For a shortcut on how to quickly find the highest and lowest numbers without putting them all in order, check out the video above at 0:43

The highest number in the set is 29 and the smallest number in the set is 10. 29 minus 10 equals 19, which is our range. This was short and sweet.

Even if this data set had 10,000 numbers in it, the process is still the same. Highest minus lowest equals range.

Another Range Example Problem

How to Find the RangeLet’s find the range of the following set:

57, 43, 65, 55, 39, 50, 65, 64, 52, 61, 49

Remember we are going to subtract the highest and lowest numbers in this set. To quickly find the highest and lowest, check out the video at 2:40. The highest value is 65, the lowest is 39. We subtract 39 from 65 to get 26, our range.

This process is the same even if we had a list of decimal numbers or anything else you can think of. I hope this helps you quickly find the range of a set.

To learn how to find other values of a set of numbers, check out the other articles in this series:

How to Find the Mean

How to Find the Median

How to Find the Mode

How to Find the Midrange

 

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