NUMERICAL DESCRIPTIVE MEASURES

A. Measures of Central Tendency

- It describes the “center” of a
given data set. It is a single
value about which the
observation tends to cluster.

1. The Arithmetic Mean (or simply

Mean)
- the sum of all observations
divided by the total number
of observations, denoted by
x!

Properties:
- It always exists for quantitative
variables.
- It is unique.
- It takes into account every item of
the data.
Thus, it is easily affected by extreme
values.

Example:
Ten students were polled as to the number
of siblings in their individual families.
The Mode – the observation(s) that occur
The raw data is the following set: {3, 2, 2, 1, most frequently in the data set, denoted by
3, 6, 3, 3, 4, 2}. Find the mean number of Mo.
siblings for the ten students.
Properties:
- No calculations are required (for the
ungrouped mode).
- It may not exist.
- It may not be unique.

The Median - the middle value of an array,

denoted by Md.

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.
C. Measures of Variability
B. Measures of Position
It describes the extent to which the data are
They are measures that discriminate a
dispersed.
group of scores from another group in the
Variability is descriptive statistics that
same data set.
describe how similar a set of scores are to
each other
Defn: Quantiles – divides data into an
equal number of parts.
- The more similar the scores are to
The Quartiles –are values that divide a set
each other, the lower the measure of
of observations into four equal parts,
dispersion will be
denoted by Qi, i = 1, ..., 4.
- The less similar the scores are to
The Deciles – are values that divide a set of
each other, the higher the measure
observations into 10 equal parts, denoted
of dispersion will be
by Di, i = 1, 2, ..., 10.
- In general, the more spread out a
The Percentiles – are values that divide a
distribution is, the larger the
set of observations into 100 equal parts,
measure of dispersion will be
denoted by Pi, i = 1, 2, ..., 100.
Standard Deviation (s or σ)
the positive square root of the variance.
- Since squared units of measure are
often awkward to deal with, the Measures of Skewness
square root of the variance is often Skew is a measure of symmetry in the
used instead distribution of scores
- The standard deviation is the square
root of the variance

A frequency curve that is not symmetrical

about the mean is said to be skewed. If it
tails off to the right, we describe it as
positively skewed, but if it tails off to the left,
we say it is negatively skewed. The
relationship between the mean and the
median is related to the direction skewness.

Coefficient of Variation (CV)

The ratio of the standard deviation to its
mean is expressed in percent.
- compare variability of two
populations that are expressed in
different units of measurement
- expressed as a percentage rather
than in terms of the units of the
particular data
If the mean is greater than the median, we
have positively skewed curve, but if the
mean is less than the median, we have a
negatively skewed curve. Now, with the use
of the standard deviation, it is possible to
obtain a measure of skewness that
indicates both the direction and the
magnitude (or the extent) of skewness of
frequency data.