Lesson 1 - Measures of Central Tendency

Textbook Section 6.1 page 252

Practice p. 263#1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 15

One Variable Data

● 1 variable data measures, or asks and answers 1 question in a survey
○ Examples: What is your favourite fast food restaurant?

● Data may be numerical (discrete or continuous), or categorical/qualitative

● Ways to present data include pie charts, bar graphs, histograms, leaf-stem plots etc.

Measures of Central Tendency (Mean, Median, and Mode)

● A measure of central tendency aims to indicate where data may be clustered. These
measures provide a quick and imperfect summary of data but should be used and
interpreted carefully

● An important distinction, is if the mean, median, or mode is stated based on the entire
population or a sample
Population or Sample?
○ 𝑁 is the size of the population
○ 𝑛 is the size of a sample

Mean
● Average of the data set
○ Add all of the values
○ Divide by , 𝑛 or 𝑁, the number of values in the set
● Good for data sets with generally evenly spread data, but can be misleading for skewed
data
Population Mean Sample Mean

Σ𝑥 𝑥1+𝑥2+...+𝑥𝑁 Σ𝑥 𝑥1+𝑥2+...+𝑥𝑛
µ= 𝑁
= 𝑁
𝑥= 𝑛
= 𝑛
● These are the same calculation, but we use different variables to inform the reader
whether the entire population or a sample was used in the calculation

Median
● The middle value of a ranked (ordered) data set
○ if there is an even number of data points, there will be 2 middle numbers.
In that case, take the average of the middle numbers
𝑛+1
○ add 1 to 𝑛 or 𝑁 and divide by 2 to find the rank of the median 𝑟 = 2
𝑚𝑒𝑑

0, 0, 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9, 11, 12, 20, 25, 30, 40, 40, 90

● Good for data that is skewed or unevenly spread throughout the range
Mode
● The value that occurs most frequently (most popular)
○ May be no mode (if every value occurs once), 1 mode, or several modes
● Good for data that has many repeats of the same value

Outliers
● A data point that is significantly different than the rest of the data
○ Mean (average) may be best if there are no outliers
○ Median may be best if there are outliers
○ Mode may be best when there are few options or with categorical data

● The shape of a histogram or bar chart shows the distribution of the data.
● Skew pulls the mean toward the tail
Uniform Distribution

The data is fairly consistent all the way across.

Skewed Left (Negatively skewed) Skewed Right (Positively skewed)

There is a ‘tail’ on the left side of the graph. The ‘tail’ is on the right side of the graph.
Bimodal Normal (Symmetrical)

There are two distinct peaks in the data.

There is a bell-shape formed by the data.
 The table shows a list of temperatures in Mexico over a week.
a) Determine the mean, median and mode of the temperatures

Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Temp 27 29 32 29 45 29 31

b) Is there an outlier in the data? How does it affect the measures of central tendency?

c) Which measure of central tendency would best represent the temperatures in this Mexican
location? Explain.

For histograms, data is aggregated. The mode is easy to read from the chart, but we don't need
to list out the entire data set to calculate the mean
Mean for Grouped Data

Σ𝑓𝑖𝑚𝑖 𝑓1𝑚1+𝑓2𝑚2+𝑓3𝑚3+... ● 𝑚𝑖 is the midpoint of each interval

Σ𝑓𝑖
= 𝑓1+𝑓2+𝑓3+... ● 𝑓𝑖 is the frequency of each interval

Example: Calculate/find the mean, median, and mode

Weighted Mean
● Not all data points are valued equally. Often, it is useful to weight the mean, giving more
or less importance in the calculation of mean to certain entries:
○ For example a quiz score of 60% and a test score of 90%

Weighted Mean

Σ𝑥𝑖𝑤𝑖 𝑥1𝑤1+𝑥2𝑤2+𝑥3𝑤3+... ● 𝑥𝑖 is the data value

µ= Σ𝑤𝑖
= 𝑤1+𝑤2+𝑤3+... ● 𝑤𝑖 is the weight for that data point

What unit grade is appropriate for a quiz score of 60% and a test score of 90%?

A math department assigns the following weights for each category in its Advanced Functions
course:

Unit Tests 50%

Assignments 20%
RST 10%
Final Exam 20%

Catherine’s marks in the course so far are 84% overall on Unit Tests, 92% on her
assignments, and 88% on her RST, with the final exam still to be written.
a) Determine the weighted mean for Catherine before writing her final exam

b) Is it possible for Catherine to receive a final mark of 90% in the course? Justify your
answer.