UNIT III -Measures of Central Tendency 2.ppt

UNIT III -Measures of Central Tendency 2.ppt

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  1 Measures of CentralTendency
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  2 Measures of CentralTendency A measure of central tendency is a descriptive statistic that describes the average, or typical value of a set of scores There are three common measures of central tendency: the mode the median the mean
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  3 The Mode The modeis the score that occurs most frequently in a set of data 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 75 80 85 90 95 Score on Exam 1 Frequency
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  4 Bimodal Distributions When adistribution has two “modes,” it is called bimodal 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 75 80 85 90 95 Score on Exam 1 Frequency
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  5 Multimodal Distributions If adistribution has more than 2 “modes,” it is called multimodal 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 75 80 85 90 95 Score on Exam 1 Frequency
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  6 When To Usethe Mode The mode is not a very useful measure of central tendency It is insensitive to large changes in the data set That is, two data sets that are very different from each other can have the same mode 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
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  7 When To Usethe Mode The mode is primarily used with nominally scaled data It is the only measure of central tendency that is appropriate for nominally scaled data
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  8 The Median The medianis simply another name for the 50th percentile It is the score in the middle; half of the scores are larger than the median and half of the scores are smaller than the median
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  9 How To Calculatethe Median Conceptually, it is easy to calculate the median There are many minor problems that can occur; it is best to let a computer do it Sort the data from highest to lowest Find the score in the middle middle = (N + 1) / 2 If N, the number of scores, is even the median is the average of the middle two scores
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  10 Median Example What isthe median of the following scores: 10 8 14 15 7 3 3 8 12 10 9 Sort the scores: 15 14 12 10 10 9 8 8 7 3 3 Determine the middle score: middle = (N + 1) / 2 = (11 + 1) / 2 = 6 Middle score = median = 9
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  11 Median Example What isthe median of the following scores: 24 18 19 42 16 12 Sort the scores: 42 24 19 18 16 12 Determine the middle score: middle = (N + 1) / 2 = (6 + 1) / 2 = 3.5 Median = average of 3rd and 4th scores: (19 + 18) / 2 = 18.5
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  12 When To Usethe Median The median is often used when the distribution of scores is either positively or negatively skewed The few really large scores (positively skewed) or really small scores (negatively skewed) will not overly influence the median
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  13 The Mean The meanis: the arithmetic average of all the scores (X)/N the number, m, that makes (X - m) equal to 0 the number, m, that makes (X - m)2 a minimum The mean of a population is represented by the Greek letter ; the mean of a sample is represented by X
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  14 Calculating the Mean Calculatethe mean of the following data: 1 5 4 3 2 Sum the scores (X): 1 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 = 15 Divide the sum (X = 15) by the number of scores (N = 5): 15 / 5 = 3 Mean = X = 3
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  15 When To Usethe Mean You should use the mean when the data are interval or ratio scaled Many people will use the mean with ordinally scaled data too and the data are not skewed The mean is preferred because it is sensitive to every score If you change one score in the data set, the mean will change
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  16 Relations Between theMeasures of Central Tendency In symmetrical distributions, the median and mean are equal For normal distributions, mean = median = mode In positively skewed distributions, the mean is greater than the median In negatively skewed distributions, the mean is smaller than the median