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1 Mean, Mode, Median

This document discusses statistics and measures of central tendency. It defines statistics as the study of collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data. It explains that central tendency refers to single values that represent an entire data set and are calculated using the mean, median, and mode. The mean is the average value found by summing all values and dividing by the number of values. The median is the middle-most value when data is arranged in order. The mode is the value that occurs most frequently.

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17 views13 pages

1 Mean, Mode, Median

This document discusses statistics and measures of central tendency. It defines statistics as the study of collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data. It explains that central tendency refers to single values that represent an entire data set and are calculated using the mean, median, and mode. The mean is the average value found by summing all values and dividing by the number of values. The median is the middle-most value when data is arranged in order. The mode is the value that occurs most frequently.

Uploaded by

32 Jeswin Kp
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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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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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UNIT 3

Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and
organization of data. In other words, it is a mathematical discipline to collect,
summarize data.
Central Tendency
The central tendency is stated as the statistical measure that represents the single
value of the entire distribution or a dataset. It aims to provide an accurate
description of the entire data in the distribution.
The central tendency of the dataset can be found out using the three important
measures like mean, median and mode.

Mean
The mean represents the average value of the dataset. It can be calculated as the
sum of all the values in the dataset divided by the number of values. In general,
it is considered as the arithmetic mean.

Consider an example, where the marks obtained by 5 students in a test are


10,13,15,18 and 20. To calculate the mean, we take the sum of observations
divided by the total number of observations.
10+13+15+18+20 76
Mean = 5 = 5 =15.2

If x1,x2,x3…..xn are the observations and n is the number of observations then,

Mean= x1 + x2 + x3 +…..xn
n
Or,
If x1 ,x2 ,x3 , …..xn are observations with respective frequencies f 1 ,f2 ,f3 ,…..fn
then this means observation x1 occurs f1 times,x2 occurs f2 times and so on.

Solution:
Mean,

For the same example above, the data can also be given as intervals. That is,

Remember that, while allocating frequencies to each class-interval, students


falling in any upper class-limit would be considered in the next class, e.g., 7
students who have obtained 40 marks would be considered in the class interval
40-55 and not in 25-40.
Now, for each class-interval, we require a point which would serve as the
representative of the whole class. It is assumed that the frequency of each class
interval is centred around its mid-point. So the mid-point (or class mark) of
each class can be chosen to represent the observations falling in the class. Recall
that we find the mid-point of a class (or its class mark) by finding the average of
its upper and lower limits. That is,

25+10
With reference to the above table, the class mark for 10-25 is 2
=17.5

This method of finding the mean is known as the Direct Method.

Median
The median is that value of the given number of observations, which divides it
into exactly two parts, when the data is arranged in ascending (or descending)
order. That is, the median is a measure of central tendency which gives the
value of the middle-most observation in the data.

We calculate the median of the ungrouped data as follows:


Since the number of students is 9, an odd number, we find out the median by
finding

Solution:
From the table above, we see that:

50th observation is 28
51st observation is 29
Therefore,

Example: Consider a grouped frequency distribution of marks obtained, out of


100, by 53 students, in a certain examination, as follows:
Solution:
Now in a grouped data, we may not be able to find the middle observation by
looking at the cumulative frequencies, as the middle observation will be some
value in a class interval. It is, therefore, necessary to find the value inside a class
that divides the whole distribution into two halves.
Mode
A mode is that value among the observations which occurs most often, that is,
the value of the observation having the maximum frequency.

Here, from the table, the Mode is 2.


Note:

The mean is the most frequently used measure of central tendency because it
takes into account all the observations, and lies between the extremes, i.e., the
largest and the smallest observations of the entire data. It also enables us to
compare two or more distributions.

However, extreme values in the data affect the mean. For example, the mean of
classes having frequencies more or less the same is a good representative of the
data, then the mean will certainly not reflect the way the data behaves. So, in
such cases, the mean is not a good representative of the data.

In problems where individual observations are not important, and we wish to


find out a ‘typical’ observation, the median is more appropriate.

In situations which require establishing the most frequent value or most popular
item, the mode is the best choice.

There is a empirical relationship between the three measures of central


tendency:
3 Median = Mode + 2 Mean

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