116k views
4 votes
The data set represents the responses of 15 students who were asked how many text messages they send in a day. {55, 50, 54, 51, 52, 53, 50, 51, 2, 56, 55, 56, 54, 57, 55} The best measure of center for this data set is the, and its value is.

a) Mean, 51.33
b) Median, 54
c) Mode, 55
d) Range, 55

User Rowwingman
by
7.4k points

1 Answer

1 vote

Final answer:

The presence of an outlier in the data set suggests that the median is the best measure of center, which is (b) Median, 54. The median provides a better central value than the mean, which would be skewed by the outlier.

Step-by-step explanation:

The data set given represents the number of text messages sent by 15 students in a day. To determine the best measure of center for this data set, we examine the presence of any outliers or extreme values that might skew the results. In this case, the value '2' is an outlier as it is significantly lower than all other values.

Given the presence of an outlier, the median is often the best measure of center because it is not affected by extreme values. Thus, the answer is (b) Median, 54. This is because when we arrange the data set in order and take the middle value, it provides a better representation of the central tendency than the mean, which would be influenced by the extreme low value of '2'.

The mean would be calculated by adding all the values together and dividing by the number of values, but in this case, it would provide inaccurate representation due to the outlier. The mode simply indicates the most commonly occurring number, and although it represents frequency, it's not a measure of central tendency that accounts for outliers. The range gives the spread of data but isn't a measure of center.

User Luis Quiroga
by
7.4k points