Ch 2 pt 2 - The Mean

Question 1

Mean

Answer 1

The balancing point of a set of scores. It’s calculated by summing all the scores in a data set and dividing by the total number of scores (or calculating the arithmetic average).

The mean is the “balancing point” of scores because the sum of the distances of scores below the mean always equals the sum of the distances of scores above the mean.

Question 2

Deviation score

Answer 2

Refers to the deviation of the difference of each score from the mean, and is defined as (X-M).

Question 3

Means & Media

Answer 3

Mean is subject to distortion by outliers, compared to the median, which is less influenced by extreme scores.

This is one of the reasons in heavily skewed data we might choose to use the median over the mean.