Does all statistical data have a mean, median, or mode? Why? When is the mean the best measure of central tendency? When is the median the best measure of central tendency?
The mean is an average of a set of data and in order to find the mean you would simply add the numbers together and divide by the total number of inputs that were available to find the mean of those numbers. As a homeschool teacher I have to use this to find the mean of one of the students grades by adding all of the grades together and dividing the numbers by how many assignments were done. The median is the middle number that is given within the set of data and has been organized in ascending order to give me the median of the assignments. The mode of this example would be the number that occurs more frequently in the data. Statistical data does not always have a mean, mode, or median but should have at least one of these statistical measures. Using average is the best measure of a central tendency because it depends on the set of data and whether or not it has outliner’s. Furthermore, if there are not many outliner’s mean can be a good measure but if outliner’s are present within the data median is the better measure to use because it would not skew the information based on the outliner’s data. In contrast, most statistical data has a mean, median, mode, or all three, but there are some instances in which certain calculations cannot be made or are arbitrary.
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