descriptive statistics

Question 1

what are the measures of central tendency?

Answer 1

mean, median, mode

Question 2

what are the advantages of the mean?

Answer 2

• you don’t have to order the data
• represents what each value would be if they were all equal

Question 3

what are the disadvantages of the mean?

Answer 3

• often gives a decimal number which can be meaningless
• can be skewed due to outliers

Question 4

what are the advantages of the median?

Answer 4

• not affected by outliers
• when combined with the mean, it can be highly descriptive

Question 5

what are disadvantages of the median?

Answer 5

• must order the numbers from least to greatest
• the way you find a median differs based on the number of scores

Question 6

what are the advantages of the mode?

Answer 6

• you don’t have to order the data
• you do not have to do any calculations

Question 7

what are the disadvantages of the mode?

Answer 7

• it is possible to have no mode, one mode or many modes
• not a great descriptor as there is no guarantee that the mode reflects the whole data sets