Question

The accompanying histogram shows the life expectancies at birth for 190 countries as collected by an international health agency. a) Which would you expect to be​ larger: the median or the​ mean? Explain briefly. b) Which would you​ report: the median or the​ mean? Explain briefly.

Answer 1

a) The median is expected to be larger than the mean. This is because the mean is more likely to be affected by outliers than the median, which is typically a more representative measure of central tendency.

b) The median is typically reported because the median is more representative of the central tendency of the data and is less likely to be impacted by outliers.