Descriptive Statistics Calculator
Calculate mean, median, mode, standard deviation, variance, range, and IQR from a list of numbers.
Paste a comma-separated dataset for the full summary.
Descriptive statistics summarize a dataset with a small set of numbers that capture its center, spread, and shape. They are the first thing any data analyst computes — before modeling, before inference, before anything.
Measures of center:
- Mean: sum of values divided by count. Sensitive to outliers.
- Median: middle value when sorted. Robust to outliers — a billionaire moving into your neighborhood changes the mean income dramatically but barely moves the median.
- Mode: most frequently occurring value (can have multiple or none).
Measures of spread:
- Range: max minus min. Sensitive to extreme values.
- Variance: average squared distance from the mean. Squaring penalizes large deviations heavily. Sample variance divides by n-1 (Bessel’s correction) to reduce bias when estimating a population.
- Standard deviation: square root of variance, in the original units. About 68% of normally distributed data falls within 1 SD of the mean; 95% within 2 SD.
- IQR (Interquartile Range): Q3 minus Q1. The middle 50% of the data. Robust to outliers and more useful than range for skewed distributions.
Q1 is the median of the lower half, Q3 the median of the upper half. A data point is typically considered an outlier if it falls more than 1.5×IQR below Q1 or above Q3 — this is the basis for the whiskers in a box plot.
The chart plots your data values as a dot plot, showing the distribution visually alongside the numerical summary.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
SuperGlobalCalculator is independently built and maintained. See how we build and verify our calculators.