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A Measure of Central Tendency Is A Single Value That Attempts To Describe A Set of Data by Identifying The Central Position Within That Set of Data

A measure of central tendency describes the central or typical value for a dataset and includes the mean, median, and mode. The mean is the sum of all values divided by the number of values and is the most common measure of central tendency. The median is the middle value of a dataset when the values are arranged in order. The mode is the value that occurs most frequently in a dataset. Different datasets are more appropriately described by different central tendency measures depending on the distribution of the values.

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106 views

A Measure of Central Tendency Is A Single Value That Attempts To Describe A Set of Data by Identifying The Central Position Within That Set of Data

A measure of central tendency describes the central or typical value for a dataset and includes the mean, median, and mode. The mean is the sum of all values divided by the number of values and is the most common measure of central tendency. The median is the middle value of a dataset when the values are arranged in order. The mode is the value that occurs most frequently in a dataset. Different datasets are more appropriately described by different central tendency measures depending on the distribution of the values.

Uploaded by

Elsa Bautista
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A measure of central tendency is a single value that attempts to

describe a set of data by identifying the central position within that


set of data. As such, measures of central tendency are
sometimes called measures of central location. They are also
classed as summary statistics. The mean (often called the
average) is most likely the measure of central tendency that you
are most familiar with, but there are others, such as the median
and the mode. The mean, median and mode are all valid
measures of central tendency, but under different conditions,
some measures of central tendency become more appropriate to
use than others. In the following sections, we will look at the
mean, mode and median, and learn how to calculate them and
under what conditions they are most appropriate to be used.

Mean (Arithmetic)
The mean (or average) is the most popular and well known measure of central
tendency. It can be used with both discrete and continuous data, although its
use is most often with continuous data (see our Types of Variable guide for
data types). The mean is equal to the sum of all the values in the data set
divided by the number of values in the data set. So, if we have n values in a
data set and they have values x1,x2, …,xn, the sample mean, usually denoted
by x― (pronounced "x bar"), is:\
This formula is usually written in a slightly different manner using
the Greek capitol letter, ∑, pronounced "sigma", which means
"sum of...":

You may have noticed that the above formula refers to the sample
mean. So, why have we called it a sample mean? This is
because, in statistics, samples and populations have very
different meanings and these differences are very important, even
if, in the case of the mean, they are calculated in the same way.
To acknowledge that we are calculating the population mean and
not the sample mean, we use the Greek lower case letter "mu",
denoted as μ:
The mean is essentially a model of your data set. It is the value
that is most common. You will notice, however, that the mean is
not often one of the actual values that you have observed in your
data set. However, one of its important properties is that it
minimises error in the prediction of any one value in your data set.
That is, it is the value that produces the lowest amount of error
from all other values in the data set.
Some of this characteristics are the measures that we conduct to
one another

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