Descriptive Statistics

Measures location
Measures of location
• Mean
• Median
• Mode
Mean
•The mean of a data set is the average of
all the data values.
•Another name for average.
•If describing a population, denoted as ,
the Greek letter “mu”.
•If describing a sample, denoted as ,
called “x-bar”.
•Appropriate for describing measurement
data.
Calculating Sample Mean

X
Formula: X  i
n
That is, add up all of the data points and divide
by the number of data points.
Data (# of classes skipped): 2 8 3 4 1
Sample Mean = (2+8+3+4+1)/5 = 3.6
Do not round! Mean need not be a whole number.
Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

Easy to understand and calculate

Make use of full data
It is useful for comparison
Its concept is familiar to most of people
Disadvantages
It affected by the extreme in the data
set
It is tedious to calculate for large data
It cannot calculated grouped data
with open ended classes
Median
 The median is the point corresponding to the score that
lies in the middle of the distribution (i.e., there are as
many data points above the median as there are below
the median).
 To find the median, the data points must first be sorted
into either ascending or descending numerical order.
 The position of the median value can then be calculated
using the following formula:

Median Location = N + 1
2
Advantages and disadvantages
Advantages
The median is unaffected by extreme value
Easy to understand and calculate
Is unique
Always exist
Disadvantages
The median does not contain information on the
other value of distribution
The median is less amenable to statistical test
Mode
• The mode is simply the value of the relevant variable that
occurs most often (i.e., has the highest frequency) in the
sample

• Note that if you have done a frequency histogram, you can

often identify the mode simply by finding the value with the
highest bar.

• However, that will not work when grouping was performed

prior to plotting the histogram (although you can still use
the histogram to identify the modal group, just not the
modal value).

• Modes in particular are probably best applied to nominal

data
Advantages and disadvantages
Exercise
Answer the following question
1- Draw the frequency table
2- Calculate mean, median and mode
3- Calculate the quartiles (1st, 2nd and 3rd)