Measures of Central Tendency

What is a measure of Central Tendency? Numbers that describe what is average or typical of the distribution You can think of this value as where the middle of a distribution lies. The goal of measures of central tendency is to come up with the one single number that best describes a distribution of scores. Lets us know if the distribution of scores tends to be composed of high scores or low scores.

There are three basic measures of central tendency, and choosing one over another depends on two different things. 1. The scale of measurement used, so that a summary makes sense given the nature of the scores. 2. The shape of the frequency distribution, so that the measure accurately summarizes the distribution.

Considerations for Choosing a Measure of Central Tendency

For a nominal variable, the mode is the only measure that can be used. For ordinal variables, the mode and the median may be used. The median provides more information (taking into account the ranking of categories.) For interval-ratio variables, the mode, median, and mean may all be calculated. The mean provides the most information about the distribution, but the median is preferred if the distribution is skewed.

Measures of Central Tendency Mean Median Mode

A. Mean - commonly referred to as the average or arithmetic mean. - most widely used measure of central location.

Example : Calculate the Arithmetic Mean DIRC Monthly Users Statistics in the University Library Month Sep-2011 Oct-2011 Nov-2011 Dec-2011 Jan-2012 Feb-2012 Total No. of Working Days 24 21 23 25 24 23 140 Total Users 11618 8857 11459 8841 5478 10811 57064 Average Users per month 484.08 ? ? ? ? ? 407.6

= 407.6

Characteristics of Mean 1. Easy to compute 2. Makes use of all the available information 3. Cannot be computed when the frequency distribution table has open intervals and the raw data is not available. 4. The sum of the deviations of the observations from the mean is always zero. 5. May not be an actual observation in the data set 6. Can be applied in at least interval level 7. Strongly influenced by the extreme values, especially when n is large. Advantages of Mean: It is easy to understand & simple calculate. It is based on all the values. It is rigidly defined . It is easy to understand the arithmetic average even if some of the details of the data are lacking. It is not based on the position in the series. Disadvantages of Mean: It is affected by extreme values. It cannot be calculated for open end classes. It cannot be located graphically It gives misleading conclusions. When to use the Mean: To describe the middle of the set of data that DOES NOT have an OUTLIER. For symmetric distributions. Other measures are to be made.

B. Median The score that divides the distribution into two equal parts, so that half the cases are above it and half below it. The median is the middle score, or average of middle scores in a distribution. Usually, the median can be found by a simple counting procedure: 1. With an odd number of scores, list the values in order, and the median is the middle score in the list. 2. With an even number of scores, list the values in order, and the median is half-way between the middle two scores.

Characteristics of Median 1. easy to compute, especially when n is small 2. not influenced by extreme observations 3. purely positional measure and does not use the values of the observation in the computations. 4. Meaningful when the distributions is fairly symmetric 5. Not amenable to further computation 6. Can be applied in at least ordinal level Advantages of Median: Median can be calculated in all distributions. Median can be understood even by common people. Median can be ascertained even with the extreme items. It can be located graphically It is most useful dealing with qualitative data Disadvantages of Median: It is not based on all the values. It is not capable of further mathematical treatment. It is affected fluctuation of sampling. In case of even no. of values it may not the value from the data. When to use Median: 1. when the exact midpoint is desired. 2. When there are extreme observations 3. When there are gaps in the frequency distributions (i.e. classes with zero frequencies), for as long as the median class is defined.

C. Mode Mode is the most frequent value or score in the distribution. It is defined as that value of the item in a series. highest point of the frequencies distribution curve.

Characteristics of Mode: 1. Easy to understand 2. Not affected by extreme values 3. Not amenable to further computations 4. May not exist if all observations occur with the same frequency 5. May not be unique if more than one observation has the largest frequency 6. Most meaningful measure of central tendency when the distribution is strongly skewed 7. Can be computed even when the frequency distribution table has open intervals, for as long as the modal class before and after are not open 8. Can be used for qualitative data. Advantages of Mode : Mode is readily comprehensible and easily calculated It is the best representative of data It is not at all affected by extreme value. The value of mode can also be determined graphically. It is usually an actual value of an important part of the series. Disadvantages of Mode : It is not based on all observations. It is not capable of further mathematical manipulation. Mode is affected to a great extent by sampling fluctuations. Choice of grouping has great influence on the value of mode.

When to use the Mode: 1. When a quick approximation of the central tendency is desired 2. When the most typical value of the distribution is desired 3. When the distribution is skewed, since it gives the point of concentration or clustering 4. When the data is measured on a nominal scale

The Shape of Distributions With perfectly bell shaped distributions, the mean, median, and mode are identical. With positively skewed data, the mode is lowest, followed by the median and mean. With negatively skewed data, the mean is lowest, followed by the median and mode.