Question

When compiling results from the volleyball team's vertical jump testing, the strength and conditioning professional notices that most scores are similar, but there are three scores that are much higher than the rest. Which of the following measures of central tendency is most appropriate for this group?

- mean.
- median.
- mode.
- variance.

Answer 1

For the volleyball team's vertical jump data with outliers, the median is the most suitable measure of central tendency because it is not influenced by the few significantly higher scores.

Step-by-step explanation:

When compiling results from a volleyball team's vertical jump testing and noticing that most scores are similar with a few being significantly higher, the most appropriate measure of central tendency would be the median. This is because the median is the middle value of a data set and is not affected by outliers or extreme values, which can significantly skew the mean. While the mode indicates the most frequently occurring score and the mean is the arithmetic average, they may not accurately represent the central tendency of the data due to these outliers. In this scenario, where the mean is likely inflated by the exceptionally high scores, the median will provide a more reliable measure of the dataset's center.