Measures of central tendency Flashcards
What are the strengths of using the mean?
Most commonly used measure of central tendency so it is easy to calculate
it takes all values into account
It is the most sensitive measure of central tendency because it takes into account the exact distance between all values of data
what are disadvantages of using the mean?
it cannot be used with nominal data
its sensitivity means that it can be distorted by one or a few extreme values and thus end up being misrepresentative of the data as a whole
What are strengths of the median?
the median is not affected by extreme scores (outliers/skewed data)
it is appropriate for ordinal (ranked) data
what are the weaknesses of the median?
it is not as sensitive as the mean because the exact values are not reflected in the final calculation. It ignores all but the middle distribution
what are advantages of the mode?
easy to calculate
it is the only method that can be used when data is nominal
It is not affected by extreme values
disadvantages of the mode?
it tells us nothing about other values in a distribution
Sometimes data has several modes
name a measure of dispersion
the range, it is customary to add one.
It is biggest value minus the smallest value
name another measure of dispersion
standard deviation
it tells you how far each score lies from the mean
what are the advantages and disadvantages of using the range?
the range is easy to calculate
it is affected by extreme values
it fails to take into account the distribution of numbers
it is susceptible to outliers
what are the advantages and disadvantages of standard deviation?
it is a precise measure of dispersion because it takes all of the exact values into account
it is not difficult to calculate
it may hide some of the characteristics of the data set (extreme values)
