Descriptive Statistics

Do now

Quantitative or qualitative data?

1. An experiment
2. An interview
3. A questionnaire (open questions)
4. A questionnaire (closed questions)
5. A correlation
6. A structured observation
7. An unstructured observation
What do you need to know?

Measures of central tendency – mean, median, mode

Calculation of mean, median and mode

Measures of dispersion; range and standard deviation

Calculation of range

Levels of measurement: nominal, ordinal and interval

Measures of Central Tendency
Mean

The average calculated by adding up all the values in a set of data and
dividing by the number of values there are

5, 7, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17

5 + 7 + 7 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 14 + 15 + 17 = 107

107 ➗ 10 = 10.7
Mean

The mean is the most sensitive of the measures of central tendency as it

includes all of the scores/values in the data set within the calculation

This means it is more representative of the data as a whole

However, the mean is easily distorted by extreme values

5, 7, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17 98

If we recalculate the mean it becomes 18.8, which doesn’t represent the data overall
Median

The middle value in a data set when scores are arranged from lowest to
highest

5, 7, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17

Median = 10.5
Median

Unaffected by extreme scores

So, even if 98 replaced 17, the median remains the same

However, it is less sensitive than the mean as the actual values

of lower and higher numbers are ignored and extreme values may
be important
Mode

The mode is the most frequently occurring score/value within a data set

In some data sets there may be two modes (bi-modal) or no mode if all scores
are different

5, 7, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17

The mode here would be 7 which is not representative of the data set

Mode is useful for categorical data

Your task...

The table below shows the results of a energy drink experiment

P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10
Energy 110 59 206 89 76 141 152 98 198 57
drink
Water 122 45 135 90 42 87 131 113 129 62

1. Calculate the mean, median and mode for the Energy drink condition and
the water condition. Give all answers rounded to the nearest whole
number.
2. What can you conclude from these calculations?
Measures of central tendency

When deciding whether to use mean, median or mode to analyse our

data we need to look at the type of data we have
 Description Advantage Disadvantage
Mean Average score Takes all scores into account. Misleading if there are two or more
from pps. extremes.
A sensitive measure.

Median This is the Unaffected by a few extremes, Ignores most of the scores (so is less
middle score. because it focuses on middle. representative).

Is not always representative of scores

obtained, especially if there are only a
few.

Mode The most Unaffected by one or two Unreliable.

frequently extremes.
occurring score. There can also be more than one mode
Easiest to work out. (bi-modal) or no mode.