In descriptive statistics, the interquartile range (IQR), also called the midspread or middle fifty, is a measure of statistical dispersion, being equal to the difference between the upper and lower quartiles, IQR = Q₃ −  Q₁

Unlike (total) range, the interquartile range is a robust statistic, having a breakdown point of 25%, and is thus often preferred to the total range.

The IQR is used to build box plots, simple graphical representations of a probability distribution.

For a symmetric distribution (where the median equals the midhinge, the average of the first and third quartiles), half the IQR equals the median absolute deviation (MAD).

The median is the corresponding measure of central tendency.

For the data in this table the interquartile range is IQR = 115 − 105 = 10.

For the data set in this box plot:

The interquartile range of a continuous distribution can be calculated by integrating the probability density function (which yields the cumulative distribution function — any other means of calculating the CDF will also work). The lower quartile, Q₁, is a number such that integral of the PDF from -∞ to Q₁ equals 0.25, while the upper quartile, Q₃, is such a number that the integral from -∞ to Q₃ equals 0.75; in terms of the CDF, the quartiles can be defined as follows: