Question

I asked the renters of 15 apartments in my neighborhood how much they paid per month. One apartment had a much higher rent than all the others, and this outlier caused the mean rent to be higher than the median rent.

a. True
b. False

Answer 1

An outlier in the data set has pushed the mean rent higher than the median, demonstrating the effect outliers have on the mean, which is true.

Step-by-step explanation:

The scenario described by the student indicates a fundamental concept in statistics where an outlier significantly affects the mean of a data set. Because the outlier rental price is much higher than the others, it pushes the average (mean) rent higher. The median, which is the middle value when all rents are listed in ascending order, is less affected by outliers and remains more representative of the central tendency of the bulk of the data. Therefore, in this case, it is true that the outlier caused the mean rent to be higher than the median rent.