Objectives

o       Learn how to calculate measures of central tendency--

mean, median, and mode

o       Know what each measure of central tendency says

about a data set

Lesson

To characterize or describe a data set, we must learn the

meaning and purpose of several different types of statistical
values. Two important statistics are measures of central
tendency and dispersion. As the name indicates, a measure of
central tendency attempts to describe the "center" of a data
set--this center might be the most common value, the value that
lies in the middle of the range of values in the data set, or some
average of the values in the data set. (You've probably heard of
and used averages before; we will here delve into averages
and similar measures in greater detail.) This lesson is devoted
to measures of central tendency; later, we will also consider
dispersion, which is a measure of the "spread" of data around
some center, and asymmetry (skewness), which measures how
data is "skewed" to either side of the center.

 
A data set such as that shown in the following histogram
displays a fairly obvious center: the center bar. If you are
familiar with averages (means), you can probably already point
to the average of the data, which is the central (and tallest) bar
in the graph (assuming that the data values to which the bars
correspond are evenly distributed, as would be the case in a
histogram)

What if the data isn't symmetrically distributed, though?

Consider the data set below.    

In this data set, the tallest peak is not at the center. If you
calculated the average of this data set, you'd also find that the
average doesn't correspond with the tallest peak. As a result,
we must not only do our math carefully, we must also carefully
select what kind of math we do so that we accurately represent
the data. Having shown why an average is not always the best
statistic to use when characterizing a data set, we can now turn
to the definition and use of (this and) other measures of central
tendency.

 Mean (Average)

 A mean (average) is perhaps the most well known measure of

central tendency. In baseball, fans might talk about a pitcher's
earned run average (ERA); students in a class might be
interested in their grade point average (GPA). The average
(also called the arithmetic mean--this is the typical sense
when just the word mean is used) of a data set is the sum of all
the data values divided by the total number of values in the set.
Algebraically, a data set {x1, x2, x3,.,xN} has a mean μ defined as
follows:

  (Note that we use the Greek character μ, indicating that this is

a population mean; the same formula applies when calculating
the sample mean--you might see the sample mean expressed

using in this case, for instance. The bar notation simply

indicates a mean.) More generally, if we have a set of values
{x1, x2, x3,., xN} with associated frequencies {f1, f2, f3,., fN} (recall
how we defined a frequency in the previous lesson-here, we
are simply saying that the data value xi occurs fi times in the
data set), then we can define the mean μ as follows:

 The numerator of this expression simply says that the sum

consists of each value multiplied by the number of times it
occurs in the data set. The denominator is simply the total
number of data values in the set (each value may occur more
than once, so the denominator does not equal N).

 A mean is best suited to cases where the data are

symmetrically distributed, as with the first bar graph shown
above. If the data is skewed, as with the second bar graph
above, the mean is not as helpful. Consider the data tables
below; the table on the left is a symmetrical distribution, like the
first bar graph, and the table on the right is a skewed
distribution, like the second bar graph. (You may want to try
graphing these distributions to get a sense of how the tables
and graphs relate.)

 
Data
Data Frequency
Frequency Value
Value
1 1
1 1
    2 7
2 2   
   3 20
3 4
 
4 8   4 15

5 16   5 12
6 8 6 9
7 4 7 6
8 2 8 3
9 1 9 1

Table 1 Table 2
Using the mean formula for data with associated frequencies,
we calculate the mean of the data in Table 1 as 5. The mean
for the data in Table 2 is 4.38. Obviously, the mean in the case
of Table 1 does a good job of describing the data: the data
value 5 is the most frequent value, and the other values show
progressively lower frequencies. Thus, the mean shows the
central tendency of the data set in this case. In the case of
Table 2, the mean doesn't do such a good job: the most
frequent value is 3, but the mean is between two less frequent
values (4 and 5). As such, we must consider other measures of
central tendency for non-symmetric data sets.

Practice Problem: Calculate the mean of the following data

set:

{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26}

Solution: Simply use the formula for the mean μ as given

above. The result is the same regardless of whether the data
corresponds to a population or a sample. Note that this data set
contains 14 data values.
 

Thus, the mean of the data set is about 13.4.

Mode

The mode is a measure of central tendency that corresponds

to the most frequent data value. Referring once more to the
example data tables above, the mode of the data in Table 1 is
5, and the mode of the data in Table 2 is 3. The mode always
selects the "peak" of the frequency graph. In some cases,
however, a data set may have more than one value that is the
mode; this situation occurs when two or more values both have
the same frequency and have the greatest frequency of any
value in the set.
 

Practice Problem: What is the mode of the following data set?

{8, 1, 2, 0, 3, 6, 2, 8, 4, 5, 6, 1, 8, 6, 3, 9, 0, 9}

Solution: The mode is the data value (or values) that occurs
most frequently. One way to find the mode is to draw a graph of
the data (such as a histogram) and find the highest point on the
graph. Alternatively, we can order the data set and look to see
which value is the mode.

{0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9}

By inspection, we can see that both 6 and 8 correspond to the

mode of the data set. Note that if each value in a data set
occurs the same number of times, the mode is not helpful.

 
Median

Another measure of central tendency is the median. The

median is the value that corresponds to the middle of an
ordered set of data; that is to say, exactly half the data values
in a set are below the median and exactly half are above the
median. The easiest (conceptually, anyhow) method of
calculating the median of a data set is to write the data in
ascending order, then find the middle value. If the data set has
an odd number of values, the median is a clear single value; if
the data set has an even number of values, there is no single
middle value. Instead, in this latter case, the median can be
defined as the mean of the two middle values. Thus, given an
ordered data set {x1, x2, x3,., xN} with N members, we can write
the median M algebraically as

The median is a useful measure of central tendency in cases

where a few data values at one extreme or another have a
disproportionate effect on the mean. Consider the data set
below, which might correspond to the incomes (in thousands of
dollars) of a certain group of people.

{24; 42; 64; 38; 49; 30; 34; 29; 2,350; 1,932, 61, 52, 51, 19, 28}

This set has 15 data values, so we do not need to calculate a

mean of two middle values. To find the median, let's first rewrite
the data set in ascending order. Next, we'll identify the middle
value: this is the eighth data value, since there are seven
values above it and seven values below it. The median is
underlined in the ordered set below.

{19; 24; 28; 29; 30; 34; 38; 42; 49; 51; 52; 61; 64; 1,932; 2,350}

Let's now compare this result, 42, with the mean. Using the
formula given above, we calculate the mean of this data set as
approximately 320. Note carefully that the mean in this case is
well above the incomes of the majority of the people from
whom these data were taken--only 2 people in the group make
at least the mean income, whereas 13 people (the vast
majority) make far less than the mean income. The median
income, however, does a much better job of expressing the
central tendency of the data. If we were to ignore the two
individuals with extremely high incomes, we would find the
mean income of the remaining individuals to be about 40, which
is close to the median income.

A slightly more difficult problem arises when the data values

have associated frequencies; in such cases, writing a list of
values may be quite difficult, since the number of values can be
large. Nevertheless, the median can be identified without too
much difficulty if an ordered list of values and associated
frequencies is either available or is constructed. We know that
in an ordered list of N values, the median is the value that falls
in the middle. If the ordered list has associated frequencies,
then the median is the value for which the cumulative frequency
is N/2 (for even N) or (N + 1)/2 (for odd N). Of course, the index
(N/2, for instance) of the median may not be equal to the
cumulative frequency of a particular value; the index of the
median, however, must be both less than the cumulative
frequency of the median as well as greater than the cumulative
frequency of the immediately preceding value. This concept is
best illustrated by example, so consider the following practice
problems.
 

Practice Problem: Find the median of the data set below.

{102, 403, 729, 843, 920, 360, 842, 941, 357, 483, 207, 670,
471, 109}

Solution: First, order the data. Note that because the set has 14
members, the median is the mean of two central values. These
values are underlined in the ordered set below.

{102, 109, 207, 357, 360, 403, 471, 483, 670, 729, 842, 843,
920, 941}

Now, calculate the median M by finding the mean of 471 and

483.

 
 

The median of this data set is thus 477.