The most widely used statistic of variability in measurement is the?

The standard deviation is the most widely used statistic of variability because it provides a clear measure of how much individual data points differ from the mean of a dataset. It is particularly valuable because it is expressed in the same units as the data, allowing for a straightforward interpretation of the data's spread or dispersion. The standard deviation reflects not just the average distance of data points from the mean, but it also accounts for every data point in the calculation, making it sensitive to all variations within the dataset.

In contrast, while variance also measures variability, it is calculated as the average of the squared deviations from the mean and is expressed in squared units. This makes it less intuitive for interpretation. The standard score, or z-score, indicates how many standard deviations an element is from the mean but does not provide a measure of variability itself. Lastly, the range measures simply the difference between the highest and lowest values in a dataset and does not take into account the distribution of other data points, making it a less comprehensive measure of variability compared to standard deviation.