0.16. Descriptive Statistics Flashcards
What is the mean?
The average
How do you find the mean?
Add all the data figures up and divide by total number in the data set
What is a strength of the mean?
Takes into account all data in a data set - it is sensitive
What is a weakness of the mean?
Can be skewed by extreme scores
What is the median?
The middle
How do you find the median?
- line up all data in the data set and do smallest-largest
- find the middle figure
What are the strengths of the median?
- not distorted by extreme figures
- used for ordinal data
What is the weakness of the median?
Doesn’t tell us much about the data, just the middle number
What is the mode?
The most occurring
How do you find the mode?
Line up all the data in the data set in order smallest to largest, find the ones that occur the most
What is a strength of the mode?
- used for nominal data/ to show frequency
What is a weakness of the mode?
- not always one mode, sometimes lots of modes
What is a measure of dispersion?
- the range
- standard deviation
What is a measure of central tendancy?
- mean
- median
- mode
What is the range
highest to lowest
What is a strength of the range?
- easy to calculate
What is a weakness of the range?
- might be affected if the highest to lowest is extreme
What is standard deviation?
- Spread of scores around the mean (average-need the mean)
- the larger the number, the greater the spread
- smaller number = closer to the mean
What is a strength of standard deviation?
- most precise measure of dispersion
What is a weakness of standard deviation?
- only used for interval data (and need the mean first)
