Measures of central tendency

Question 1

Mean

Answer 1

Arithmetic average, add up all the scores and divide by the number of scores

Question 2

A03 (Sensitive Measure)

Answer 2

E- Includes all the scores/values in the data set within the calculations
E- Represents data set better than median or mode

Question 3

A03 (May Be Unrepresentative)

Answer 3

E- One very large or small number makes it distorted
E- The median or the mode ten not to be so easily distorted

Question 4

Median

Answer 4

Middle values, place scores in ascending order and select middle value. If there are two values in the middle, the mean of these is calculated

Question 5

A03 (Less Affected By Extreme Scores)

Answer 5

E- The median is only focused on the middle value
E- In some cases may be more representative of the data set as a whole

Question 6

A03 (Less Sensitive Than The Mean)

Answer 6

E- The actual values of lower and higher numbers are ignored
E- Extreme values may be important

Question 7

Mode

Answer 7

Most frequent or common value, used with categorical/nominal data

Question 8

A03 (Relevant To Categorical Data)

Answer 8

E- When data is ‘discrete’, i.e. represented in categories
E- Sometimes the mode is the only appropriate measure

Question 9

A03 (An Overly Simple Measure)

Answer 9

E- The mode may be at one extreme
E- It is not a useful way of describing data when there are many modes