Applied Statistics

Series of exercises number 2

Exercise 1:
1. What is the meaning of measures of central tendency?
2. Which is the best measure of the central tendency of the data?
3. On a normal distribution all three measures of central tendency are located at the same
score?
4. What measure of central tendency is calculated by adding all the values and dividing the sum
by the number of values?
5. Is the range considered a measure of central tendency?
Exercise 2:
1. Under what conditions might a median be a better measure of the center of your data set than

the mean?
2. It should seem clear how the mean and the median are measures of the central tendency of

the data since the mean is a familiar average and the median is the middle. However, explain
why the mode is also considered a measure of central tendency
3. The following sample data of the number of communications are taken from logs of

communication with Distance Education students:

5, 9, 5, 23, 27, 55, 34, 7, 30, 15, 22, 60, 14, 52, 297, 8, 51, 15, 51, 35, 15, 39, 137, 43, 38, 14, 93, 7

a. Compute the mean, median and mode.

b. Compute the standard deviation.
c. Determine the five number summaries.
d. Which is a better representation of the central tendency: mean or median? Explain.
 Exercise 3:
Fill in the following table:

Best Measure of the

Measurement Scale Measures you can use Examples
"Middle"

Nominal ………….. Mode …………..

Ordinal Mode Median …………….. …………..

Symmetrical data: Mean

Interval ………………. …………..
Skewed data: Median

Symmetrical data:………
Ratio Mode, Median, Mean …………..
Skewed data: ………

Exercise 4:
(Inputting data into SPSS)Use this data to complete the Exercise

1. Sort the data by the highest grade in test and name the file by "student grade"
2. Answer the following questions:
a. What percentage of the sample is female?
b. What percentage of the sample is biology?
c. What percentage of the sample is male?
 d. What percentage of the sample is from physics?
3. Fill in the following table.