Use and Representation
The five-number summary provides a concise summary of the distribution of the observations. Reporting five numbers avoids the need to decide on the most appropriate summary statistic. The five-number summary gives information about the location (from the median), spread (from the quartiles) and range (from the sample minimum and maximum) of the observations. Since it reports order statistics (rather than, say, the mean) the five-number summary is appropriate for ordinal measurements, as well as interval and ratio measurements.
It is possible to quickly compare several sets of observations by comparing their five-number summaries, which can be represented graphically using a boxplot.
The five-number summary is sometimes represented as in the following table:
| median | |
| 1st quartile | 3rd quartile |
| Minimum | Maximum |
Read more about this topic: Five-number Summary