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Suppose that in a small town of 50 people, one person earns $5,000,000 per year and the other 49 each earn $30,000. Which is the better measure of the "center": the mean or the median?
M = 30,000
(There are 49 people who earn $30,000 and one person who earns $5,000,000.)
The median is a better measure of the "center" than the mean because 49 of the values are 30,000 and one is 5,000,000. The 5,000,000 is an outlier. The 30,000 gives us a better sense of the middle of the data.
Another measure of the center is the mode. The mode is the most frequent value. There can be more than one mode in a data set as long as those values have the same frequency and that frequency is the highest. A data set with two modes is called bimodal.
Statistics exam scores for 20 students are as follows:
Find the mode.
The most frequent score is 72, which occurs five times. Mode = 72.
Five real estate exam scores are 430, 430, 480, 480, 495. The data set is bimodal because the scores 430 and 480 each occur twice.
When is the mode the best measure of the "center"? Consider a weight loss program that advertises a mean weight loss of six pounds the first week of the program. The mode might indicate that most people lose two pounds the first week, making the program less appealing.
The mode can be calculated for qualitative data as well as for quantitative data. For example, if the data set is: red, red, red, green, green, yellow, purple, black, blue, the mode is red.
When only grouped data is available, you do not know the individual data values (we only know intervals and interval frequencies); therefore, you cannot compute an exact mean for the data set. What we must do is estimate the actual mean by calculating the mean of a frequency table. A frequency table is a data representation in which grouped data is displayed along with the corresponding frequencies. To calculate the mean from a grouped frequency table we can apply the basic definition of mean: mean = We simply need to modify the definition to fit within the restrictions of a frequency table.
Since we do not know the individual data values we can instead find the midpoint of each interval. The midpoint is . We can now modify the mean definition to be where f = the frequency of the interval and m = the midpoint of the interval.
A frequency table displaying professor Blount’s last statistic test is shown. Find the best estimate of the class mean.
| Grade Interval | Number of Students |
|---|---|
| 50–56.5 | 1 |
| 56.5–62.5 | 0 |
| 62.5–68.5 | 4 |
| 68.5–74.5 | 4 |
| 74.5–80.5 | 2 |
| 80.5–86.5 | 3 |
| 86.5–92.5 | 4 |
| 92.5–98.5 | 1 |
| Grade Interval | Midpoint |
|---|---|
| 50–56.5 | 53.25 |
| 56.5–62.5 | 59.5 |
| 62.5–68.5 | 65.5 |
| 68.5–74.5 | 71.5 |
| 74.5–80.5 | 77.5 |
| 80.5–86.5 | 83.5 |
| 86.5–92.5 | 89.5 |
| 92.5–98.5 | 95.5 |
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