About Center and Variability
Center and Variability allows students to explore and compare measures of center and variability, including mean, median, range, IQR, and MAD.
How to play Center and Variability
Everything is hands-on: drag, click and experiment — the simulation reacts instantly. Center and Variability allows students to explore and compare measures of center and variability, including mean, median, range, IQR, and MAD.
Questions & answers
- What is Center and Variability?
- Center and Variability is a free interactive simulation from PhET Interactive Simulations (University of Colorado Boulder) that you can play right in your browser on crumble.lol — no downloads and no sign-up. Center and Variability allows students to explore and compare measures of center and variability, including mean, median, range, IQR, and MAD.
- What can kids learn from Center and Variability?
- It helps kids explore: describe how the median is derived. predict the effects of an outlier on both the mean and median. compare the mean and median. make sense of and determine the reasonableness of the mean and median of a data set by looking at the values and/or the distribution. predict the mean and median of a data set. compare measures of variability such as iqr and mad. explore measures of center and variability from different distributions. describe what the range, iqr, and mad measure about a distribution.
- What age is Center and Variability good for?
- It is designed for middle school (roughly ages 10–14), and curious kids outside that range can absolutely enjoy poking around it too.
- Is Center and Variability free to play?
- Yes — Center and Variability is completely free on crumble.lol and runs fully in your browser on computers and tablets.