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Mean - HTML: The Disadvantages of The Arithmetic Mean

The arithmetic mean has several merits including being easy to calculate, considering all observations, and being applicable to most data types. However, it also has disadvantages such as being strongly influenced by outliers and extreme values, not working well for skewed or qualitative data, and sometimes not coinciding with the actual observed values. The document discusses both the advantages and disadvantages of the arithmetic mean for summarizing data.

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71 views3 pages

Mean - HTML: The Disadvantages of The Arithmetic Mean

The arithmetic mean has several merits including being easy to calculate, considering all observations, and being applicable to most data types. However, it also has disadvantages such as being strongly influenced by outliers and extreme values, not working well for skewed or qualitative data, and sometimes not coinciding with the actual observed values. The document discusses both the advantages and disadvantages of the arithmetic mean for summarizing data.

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Anonymous gEZHKRyRl
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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http://www.emathzone.com/tutorials/basic-statistics/merits-and-demerits-of-arithmeticmean.

html

Merits:

It is easy to calculate and simple to follow.


It is based on all the observations.
It is determined for almost every kind of data.
It is finite and not indefinite.
It is readily put to algebraic treatment.
It is least affected by fluctuations of sampling.

Demerits:

The arithmetic mean is highly affected by extreme values.


It cannot average the ratios and precentages properly.
It is not an approprite average for highly skewed distributions.
It cannot be computed accurately if any item is missing.
The mean sometimes does not coincide with any of the abserved value.

The Disadvantages of the Arithmetic Mean

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/info_8338470_disadvantages-arithmetic-mean.html

The arithmetic mean is the familiar average. You calculate the mean by adding up the
values and dividing by the number of values. For example, the mean of 1, 4 and 7 is (1 +
4 + 7)/3 = 12/3 = 4

The arithmetic mean measures the central tendency -- that is, where the middle of a set of
values is. While the arithmetic mean is widely used and can be very useful, it is not
always appropriate.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3127352/

ADVANTAGES
The mean uses every value in the data and hence is a good representative of the data. The irony
in this is that most of the times this value never appears in the raw data.
Repeated samples drawn from the same population tend to have similar means. The mean is
therefore the measure of central tendency that best resists the fluctuation between different
samples.[6]
It is closely related to standard deviation, the most common measure of dispersion.
Go to:
DISADVANTAGES
The important disadvantage of mean is that it is sensitive to extreme values/outliers, especially
when the sample size is small.[7] Therefore, it is not an appropriate measure of central tendency
for skewed distribution.[8]
Mean cannot be calculated for nominal or nonnominal ordinal data. Even though mean can be
calculated for numerical ordinal data, many times it does not give a meaningful value, e.g. stage
of cancer.

http://www.omtexclasses.com/2011/01/merits-and-demerits-of-mean-median-and.html

MEAN

The arithmetic mean (or simply "mean") of a sample is the sum of the sampled values divided
by the number of items in the sample.

MERITS OF ARITHEMETIC MEAN

ARITHEMETIC MEAN RIGIDLY DEFINED BY ALGEBRIC FORMULA


It is easy to calculate and simple to understand
IT BASED ON ALL OBSERVATIONS AND IT CAN BE REGARDED AS

REPRESENTATIVE OF THE GIVEN DATA


It is capable of being treated mathematically and hence it is widely used in statistical

analysis.
Arithmetic mean can be computed even if the detailed distribution is not known but

some of the observation and number of the observation are known.


It is least affected by the fluctuation of sampling

DEMERITS OF ARITHMETIC MEAN

It can neither be determined by inspection or by graphical location


Arithmetic mean cannot be computed for qualitative data like data on intelligence

honesty and smoking habit etc


It is too much affected by extreme observations and hence it is not adequately represent

data consisting of some extreme point


Arithmetic mean cannot be computed when class intervals have open ends

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