Descriptive statistics

Question 1

What is an advantage of using the mean?

Answer 1

Takes all scores into account

Question 2

What is a disadvantage of using the mean?

Answer 2

Can be misleading if there are any extreme values

Question 3

What is an advantage of using the median?

Answer 3

More useful measure than mean when there are extreme values

Question 4

What is a disadvantage of using the median?

Answer 4

It can be distorted by small samples

Question 5

What is an advantage of using the mode?

Answer 5

Not influenced by extreme scores

Question 6

What is a disadvantage of using the mode?

Answer 6

Crude measure of central tendancy, not useful if many equal modes

Question 7

What is an advantage of using the range?

Answer 7

Quick and easy to calculate

Question 8

What is a disadvantage of using the range?

Answer 8

Distorted by extreme values

Question 9

What is standard deviation?

Answer 9

a measure used to quantify the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of data values

Question 10

What are the steps for calculating standard deviation?

Answer 10

step 1- Find mean of the data set
step 2-subtract the mean from each value in the data set
step 3 - square each differance
step 4 - Add up values to find the sum of squares
step 5 - divide the sum of squares by the number of values in the data set - 1
step 6 - take the square root