Review Questions

1. What is the main purpose of a measure of central tendency?

Measures of central tendency try to identify the middle or center of a distribution of
scores.
2. How do you identify the mode from a frequency distribution?
By finding the score that occurs at the highest frequency
3. Can a distribution have more than one mean, median, and mode? Explain your answer.
A distribution can have multiple modes because individual scores can occur at the same
frequency. However, each distribution can only have one mean (because it’s calculated
based on all scores in the distribution) and one median (because it is the value that
separates the distribution into 2 equal halves, 50% of scores have values below it and
50% of scores have values above it).
4. Under what circumstances will a distribution have the same mean, median, and mode?
If the distribution is symmetrical and unimodal the mean, median and mode will have the
exact same value.
5. Explain why the mean is not the best measure of central tendency for a skewed
distribution?
Because its value takes into account every individual value of each score in the distribution
the mean is the most likely to be affected by skew. In negatively skewed distributions the
mean will be lower in value because of the tail of low value scores, in positively skewed
distributions the mean will be higher in value because of the tail of high value scores.
6. What is the difference between the sample mean (M) and the population mean (μ)?
The sample mean is calculated when you have data collected from a sample of individuals,
the population mean is calculated when you have data collected from an entire
population. Other than the difference in notation to demonstrate the different sources of
data, they are calculated in the same way
7. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the mean, median, and mode as measures of
central tendency?
Mode: Strengths → easy to determine, not impacted by outliers
Weaknesses → doesn’t consider all values, as a result doesn’t say much about the
entire distribution as a whole
Median: Strengths → Less affected by outliers/extreme scores so it is more accurate
representation of center for skewed distributions
Weaknesses → Doesn’t consider the value of all scores in a distribution (just how
many are below/above it), doesn’t fully represent the entire distribution of scores,
inaccurate for distributions that are bimodal or multimodal (doesn’t account for multiple
peaks of frequencies)
Mean: Strengths → Takes into account the value of all scores in the distribution
Weaknesses → Greatly affected by outliers/extreme scores and skew, inaccurately
describes center for distributions with more than one mode

8. For which of the three aspects of distributions (modality, symmetry, and variability) do
measures of central tendency provide information?
Modality (literally the mode and how many there are) and symmetry (order of values for
each indicates symmetry/skew type)
9. Why is it important to calculate measures of variability for a variable in addition to
measures of central tendency?
Because measures of central tendency only describe the middle/center of a distribution but
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 don’t say anything about the individual scores and how similar/different they are from
one another
10. Why is the range not the best measure of variability?
It is only based on the largest and smallest valued scores in the distribution so doesn’t tell us
anything about the difference in value between other scores in the distribution
11. What is the difference between the sample variance (s2) and population variance (σ2)?
Sample variance is calculated using sample data and uses a correction of n – 1 in its
denominator. Population variance is calculated using population data and uses the basic
N (or number of scores) as its denominator).
12. In calculating the sample variance, why do we make a correction in the denominator of
the formula?
To correct for bias in the sample variance value – it makes it a more accurate estimate of the
true population variance even after being calculated from a smaller number of scores.
13. In general, what does it mean to have a standard deviation of 0?
It means that there is absolutely no variability. All scores have the same value, which is also
the value of the mean.
14. What is the difference between a biased statistic and an unbiased statistic?
A biased statistic misrepresents the population parameter that it is supposed to represent
(either over or under estimates it). An unbiased statistic is a better, more accurate
representation of the corresponding population parameter.

Review Activities
1. The results from a recent exam show that most students had high scores in the 80s and
90s, and only a few students had scores in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. What is the shape of this
distribution of scores? (Hint: sketch out the graph if you’re unsure so you have a
estimated visualization of the distribution)
Distribution is negatively skewed
2. If a negatively skewed distribution has a mean of 50, then is the value of the mode higher
or lower than the value of the mean? Why?
Value of mode is higher than value of mean because the mean will be a lower value score
as a result of the additional scores in the distribution that make up the tail in the negative
skew.
3. An instructor administered a test and the resulting class mean was 40. The instructor
realizes that a student’s score on the test was entered incorrectly. When this error is
corrected, the student’s score increases by 5 points. What would happen to the mean test
score for the class? Why?
The mean for the class would increase as the mean is affected by every score in the
distribution
4. An employment survey in 2009 was conducted to find the average starting salaries of
people receiving doctorate (PhD) degrees in Psychology (Mischalski, Kohout,
Wicherski, & Hart, 2011). The mean starting salary for psychologists in assistant
professor positions in universities was approximately $60,000 with a standard deviation
of $11,000. Clinical psychologist in their first year of practice also report a mean of
approximately $60,000 but with a standard deviation of $16,000.

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 a. Which type of psychologist has the least variability in income across individuals?
Assistant professors have the least variability in income across individuals as the
standard deviation is smaller which suggests less variability in individual incomes
(scores).
b. Which type of psychologist has the most variability in income across individuals?
Clinical psychologists have the most variability in income across individuals as the
standard deviation is larger which suggests more variability in individual incomes
(scores).

5. Use the following distribution of sample scores to answer the following questions:
5, 3, 7, 5, 4, 5, 5, 7, 4, 2, 8, 6, 4, 5, 3, 7
a. Determine the measures of central tendency by hand. Then, enter the data in jamovi
and use it to calculate them to confirm your work.
Mean:
Σ𝑋 80
𝑀= = = 5.00
𝑛 16
Median:
First, reorder in ascending order → 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8
Next, since it is even number of scores, find middle two scores and calculate their
average → (5+5)/2 = 5.
So Median = 5.00
Mode: 5.00 because this value occurs at the highest frequency

b. Calculate the measures of variability by hand. Then, enter the data in jamovi and use it
to calculate them to confirm your work.
Range = Max – Min = 8 – 2 = 6

2
𝛴(𝑋 − 𝑀)2 42
𝑠 = = = 2.80
𝑛−1 16 − 1
s = √(s2) = √(2.80) = 1.67
Scores Deviation score Squared deviation
(X) (X – M) (X – M)2

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 5 0 0
3 -2 4
7 2 4
5 0 0
4 -1 1
5 0 0
5 0 0
7 2 4
4 -1 1
2 -3 9
8 3 9
6 1 1
4 -1 1
5 0 0
3 -2 4
7 2 4
Σ(X-M)2 = 42

6. An instructor administers a 40-item quiz to her class of 34 students. Each student’s score
on the quiz represents the number of items answered correctly. Below is output from
jamovi summarizing the quiz scores. Using both the descriptive statistics calculated and
the frequency distribution graph provided below, answer the following questions:
a. Describe the shape of the distribution of quiz scores in terms of modality,
symmetry, and variability. Explain the reasoning for each of your answers.
The distribution is unimodal because there is only one most frequently occurring
score visible in the graph and there is only one mode provided by jamovi.
The distribution is positively skewed because the mean is the highest value, the
median is the second highest value, and the mode has the smallest value. You can
also see that there is a tail of less frequently occurring scores with higher values
(i.e., higher test scores). (Note: in reality this would be considered very slight
positive skew since there is not very much difference between the values of the
three measures of central tendency).
The distribution has high variability, evidenced by the larger values of the
standard deviation, variance and range (relative to the scale of quiz scores out of a
highest possible score of 40), and because the graph shows a pretty flat
distribution spread across a large number of values.
b. Write a brief statement summarizing the results of this descriptive analysis of
quiz scores (be sure to include the appropriate statistics).
Thirty-four students completed a 40-item quiz in their class. The distribution of
quiz scores was (slightly) positively skewed. The average score for the class was
M = 29.80 (s = 3.85).
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