measures of central tendency

Question 1

mean strength

Answer 1

• makes use of all values in a set which makes the results reflective and accurate of what has been found
• it is a powerful statistic for estimating differences in research making it more credible.
• used on interval or ratio data

Question 2

mean weakness

Answer 2

• extreme values can distort the mean as high or low scores would skew results and wouldn’t reflect majority of the scores
• mean can be affected by silly values which can be misleading

Question 3

median strength

Answer 3

• median unlike mean is not affected by extreme values and unlikely to be distorted
• median is easier to calculate than mean unless large groups are used
• used for ordinal data

Question 4

median weakness

Answer 4

• median is less sensitive than mean and doesn’t use all values that make the median value

Question 5

mode strength

Answer 5

• useful for data in categories
• they are unaffected by extreme scores as they are a single score
• used for nominal data

Question 6

mode weakness

Answer 6

• not useful for describing data when there are many modes

Question 7

range strength

Answer 7

• range provides direct information including extreme scores so is reflective of what is found
• easy to calculate and quicker than a standard deviation

Question 8

range weakness

Answer 8

• it includes extreme scores that can be misleading and unreliable results

Question 9

deviation strength

Answer 9

• precise measure of dispersion as every value is taken into account
• standard deviation and variance are the most sensitive descriptive measures as it is accurate and reliable

Question 10

deviation weakness

Answer 10

• it can hide some characteristics of data so extreme values can distort the results
• it can be time consuming and difficult to calculate if calculator is not provided.