What term refers to the distance between two data points in a data set?

The term that refers to the distance between two data points in a data set is "range." In statistics, the range is calculated by subtracting the smallest data point from the largest data point within a dataset, effectively providing a measure of how spread out the data points are. It gives a simple understanding of the distribution of values and can be particularly beneficial when one needs to assess the extent of variability or dispersion in a dataset.

The range provides insights into extremes in the dataset and is straightforward to compute, making it a commonly used descriptor of data spread. While other terms like deviation, interval, and variance have their specific definitions and applications in statistics, they do not specifically refer to the distance between two individual data points in the same way that range does. Deviation typically pertains to the difference between a data point and a mean. Interval could refer to a gap between numbers but doesn't define the spread of extreme points, and variance measures the average of the squared differences from the mean, focusing on the dispersion of the entire dataset rather than just the endpoints.