In a dataset, if the range is small, what does this indicate about the scores?

A small range in a dataset indicates that the scores are close to each other. The range is calculated as the difference between the highest and lowest values in the dataset. When this difference is small, it signifies that there is not much variation between the extreme scores. The scores tend to cluster around a particular value, meaning that most of the data points are relatively similar to one another. This can suggest a consistency within the data, where few scores differ significantly from the others.

In contrast, a larger range would imply a wider distribution of scores spread over a larger interval, suggesting more variability. The presence of many outliers or large variance would also lead to a larger range, but these concepts relate to different aspects of data variability rather than directly indicating how close or far apart the scores are from each other.