Measures of Central Tendency

Question 1

What’s the goal of Measures of Central Tendency?

Answer 1

To get an idea about the centre or typicality of a distribution.

Question 2

How is the mean calculated?

Answer 2

The Mean of a Variable is calculated by adding all the scores in a distribution and dividing the sum by the number of
scores.

Question 3

What’s good about the mean?

Answer 3

1. Intuitive description of the centre of a set of interval/ratio numbers which;
2. A lot of other descriptive statistics flow from it because of its;
3. Stability in the event of sampling error.

Question 4

What is a shortcoming “mean” in regard to “outliers”?

Answer 4

The mean is sensitive to extreme scores; it is pulled in the direction of extreme scores.

Question 5

What type of data is “mean” restricted to?

Answer 5

The mean is restricted to interval or ratio data, and may be meaningless if calculated with nominal or ordinal data.

Question 6

What is the “median” of a variable?

Answer 6

The median is the point in a distribution that divides the distribution into halves.

Question 7

What’s a good property of the “median”?

Answer 7

1. It is less sensitive than the mean to extreme scores.

Question 8

What are some drawbacks of the “median”?

Answer 8

It naturally works for ordinal data — but it may be difficult to calculate by hand for big data sets.

You can’t do as much with it statistically as you can with the “mean”.

Question 9

What is the “mode”?

Answer 9

The Mode of a nominal variable, such as the condition of houses’ exterior attributes, is the
attribute condition that appears most frequently in a bar chart; mode is the tallest bar in the chart.

Question 10

What are good properties about the mode?

Answer 10

It is easy to identify from a graphical display’s tallest bar.

Question 11

What are poor properties about the mode?

Answer 11

It is difficult to know what to do with more than a single mode or modal class in a “Bimodal” distribution as opposed to a “Unimodal” one.

Question 12

What are the conclusions we can draw about a symmetrical distribution with regard to mean, median, and mode?

Answer 12

A symmetrical distribution will have a mean equal to its median, and equal to its mode as long as it is unimodal.

Question 13

What are the conclusions we can draw about a asymmetrical distribution with regard to mean, median, and mode?

Answer 13

Distributional asymmetry may be diagnosed by means of the differences between its mean and median scores.