Thread: plz help i have college 2moz im resitin me exams

what are the advantages and disavantages of

a)mean eg. the numbers added up divided by the amount of numbers

b)Median eg. all the numbers are put into order the middle number is the median

c)mode eg.the most frequent number

Originally Posted by ryanb118

what are the advantages and disavantages of

a)mean eg. the numbers added up divided by the amount of numbers

b)Median eg. all the numbers are put into order the middle number is the median

c)mode eg.the most frequent number

N.B. (that means Nota Bene or "good note" in Italian): You should use i.e. (id est or "that is" in Latin) here rather than e.g. (exempli gratia or "for example" in Latin).

a) If you add a data point to the set with value equal to the mean, you don't change the mean; however, "outliers" with values far away from the mean can skew it so much that it becomes useless.

b) This is not affected by outliers, but adding data points will in general disturb the median, and the median is not particularly useful if there are huge jumps in the data values close to it.

c) This is affected by neither outliers nor (in general) adding data points, but it can be VERY far from any reasonable notion of central tendency if there happen to be several outliers (say, of value 0) that affect the median little and the mean even less but whose value ends up being the mode.