The Same Range Can Hide a Very Different Middle

Decorative acrylic columns arranged on grid paper as a visual metaphor for charts, not actual measured data.
Conceptual illustration created with AI; not a research result or laboratory photograph.

The smallest value is 2 and the largest is 10. That tells you something useful about a dataset, but very little about where the remaining observations sit.

Compare two invented lists

List A is 2, 3, 3, 4, 10. List B is 2, 8, 9, 9, 10. Both have five values, the same endpoints and a range of 8, calculated as 10 minus 2.

Yet most values in A sit near the lower end, while most in B sit near the upper end. The range alone cannot show that difference.

Place each observation on a line

Draw a number line from 2 to 10 and mark every value. Stack repeated values so they do not disappear behind one another. The sketch makes the different concentrations visible without requiring a polished chart.

Do not add a measurement unit unless the example supplies one. These lists illustrate arithmetic, not a result from a biological experiment.

Ask what the summary was meant to show

If you only need the distance between endpoints, the range answers that question. If you want to describe the distribution, retain more of the observations or use an appropriate display.

Compare this exercise with datasets that share a total. A matching summary does not make two collections of values interchangeable; it tells you precisely which limited feature they share.