measures of central tendency

Question 1

mean

Answer 1

Strength:
More sensitive because it makes use of all the values of the data.
Weakness:
Easily influenced by extreme scores. This could cause it to be less representative of the data.

Question 2

median

Answer 2

Strength:
It is not affected by extreme scores, so can give a representative value.
Weakness:
It is less sensitive as it does not take into account all of the values.

Question 3

mode

Answer 3

Strength:
It is useful when the data are in categories, such as the number of people who support each political party.
Weakness:
It is not a useful way of describing data when there are several of them. It tells you where most data points fell but nothing about the rest of the data.