Measures of Central Tendency

In statistics, we are usually trying to locate a specific value that can describe the entire set of values the best, or where the center of most of the data is located. The three most commonly used measures of central tendency are mean, median, and mode.

The mean, or the average, is the sum of all the data values divided by the total number of data collected. This will be the most

The median shows us which value is in the middle of the data set, organized in ascending/descending order.

The mode shows the value that appears more frequently in the data set. In the data set used in the previous node, we can find these three values.

In the data set used in the previous node, we can find these three values: 0, 0, 2,2,2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 10, 10, 12, 12, 15, 16, 20, 20

Here, we can calculate the mean (the average), which will be 8.11.

The median we find by looking at the value that's right smack in the middle of the data set. Since we have already organized it in order, we can find the median, which is 7. If we find 2 numbers in the middle instead of one, we just take the average of those 2 values.

The mode is the value which comes up the most, in this case, there are two modes: 2 and 5.