CHAPTER

13
Statistics

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 Measures of Central
Section13.1
Tendency

Copyright © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

The Arithmetic Mean

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The Arithmetic Mean
Statistics involves the collection, organization,
summarization, presentation, and interpretation of data.

The branch of statistics that involves the collection,

organization, summarization, and presentation of data is
called descriptive statistics.

The branch that interprets and draws conclusions from the

data is called inferential statistics.

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The Arithmetic Mean
One of the most basic statistical concepts involves finding
measures of central tendency of a set of numerical data.

We will consider three types of averages, known as the

arithmetic mean, the median, and the mode. Each of these
averages is a measure of central tendency for the
numerical data.

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The Arithmetic Mean
In statistics it is often necessary to find the sum of a set of
numbers. The traditional symbol used to indicate a
summation is the Greek letter sigma, . Thus the notation
x, called summation notation, denotes the sum of all the
numbers in a given set.

We can define the mean using summation notation.

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The Arithmetic Mean
Statisticians often collect data from small portions of a large
group in order to determine information about the group.

In such situations the entire group under consideration is

known as the population, and any subset of the
population is called a sample.

It is traditional to denote the mean of a sample by (which

is read as “x bar”) and to denote the mean of a population
by the Greek letter  (lowercase mu).

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Example 1 – Find a Mean
Six friends in a biology class of 20 students received test
grades of 92, 84, 65, 76, 88, and 90

Find the mean of these test scores.

Solution:
The 6 friends are a sample of the population of 20
students. Use to represent the mean.

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Example 1 – Solution cont’d

The mean of these test scores is 82.5.

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The Median

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The Median
Another type of average is the median. Essentially, the
median is the middle number or the mean of the two middle
numbers in a list of numbers that have been arranged in
numerical order from smallest to largest or largest to
smallest.

Any list of numbers that is arranged in numerical order from

smallest to largest or largest to smallest is a ranked list.

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Example 2 – Find a Median
Find the median of the data in the following lists.
a. 4, 8, 1, 14, 9, 21, 12 b. 46, 23, 92, 89, 77, 108

Solution:
a. The list 4, 8, 1, 14, 9, 21, 12 contains 7 numbers. The
median of a list with an odd number of entries is
found by ranking the numbers and finding the middle
number. Ranking the numbers from smallest to largest
gives
1, 4, 8, 9, 12, 14, 21

The middle number is 9. Thus 9 is the median.

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Example 2 – Solution cont’d

b. The list 46, 23, 92, 89, 77, 108 contains 6 numbers. The
median of a list of data with an even number of entries
is found by ranking the numbers and computing the
mean of the two middle numbers. Ranking the numbers
from smallest to largest gives
23, 46, 77, 89, 92, 108

The two middle numbers are 77 and 89. The mean of 77

and 89 is 83. Thus 83 is the median of the data.

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The Mode

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The Mode
A third type of average is the mode.

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Example 3 – Find a Mode
Find the mode of the data in the following lists.
a. 18, 15, 21, 16, 15, 14, 15, 21 b. 2, 5, 8, 9, 11, 4, 7, 23

Solution:
a. In the list 18, 15, 21, 16, 15, 14, 15, 21, the number 15
occurs more often than the other numbers. Thus 15 is
the mode.

b. Each number in the list 2, 5, 8, 9, 11, 4, 7, 23 occurs

only once. Because no number occurs more often than
the others, there is no mode.

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The Weighted Mean

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The Weighted Mean
A value called the weighted mean is often used when some
data values are more important than others. For instance,
many professors determine a student’s course grade from
the student’s tests and the final examination.

Consider the situation in which a professor counts the final

examination score as 2 test scores. To find the weighted
mean of the student’s scores, the professor first assigns a
weight to each score.

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The Weighted Mean
In this case the professor could assign each of the test
scores a weight of 1 and the final exam score a weight of 2.

A student with test scores of 65, 70, and 75 and a final

examination score of 90 has a weighted mean of

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The Weighted Mean

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Example 4 – Find a Weighted Mean
Table 13.1 shows Dillon’s fall semester course grades. Use
the weighted mean formula to find Dillon’s GPA for the fall
semester.

Dillon’s Grades, Fall Semester

Table 13.1

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Example 4 – Solution
The B is worth 3 points, with a weight of 4; the A is worth 4
points with a weight of 3; the D is worth 1 point, with a
weight of 3; and the C is worth 2 points, with a weight of 4.
The sum of all the weights is 4 + 3 + 3 + 4, or 14.

Dillon’s GPA for the fall semester is 2.5.

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The Weighted Mean
Data that have not been organized or manipulated in any
manner are called raw data.

A large collection of raw data may not provide much readily

observable information.

A frequency distribution, which is a table that lists

observed events and the frequency of occurrence of each
observed event, is often used to organize raw data.

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