Question

Mariah works at a zoo. She was looking at some data showing the masses of their

5
55 African elephants. The mean mass of the elephants was
3800kg
3,800kg3, comma, 800, start text, k, g, end text, and the median mass was
3
,
600

kg
3,600kg3, comma, 600, start text, k, g, end text. The heaviest elephant, named Omar, was recorded as
6
,
000

kg
6,000kg6, comma, 000, start text, k, g, end text.
Mariah found out that Omar's mass was recorded incorrectly, and that Omar actually weighed
7
,
000

kg
7,000kg7, comma, 000, start text, k, g, end text.
How will Omar's mass increasing affect the mean and median?
Choose 1 answer:

Answer 1

The correct statement regarding the impact of the mass increase in the mean and median are given as follows:

The mean will increase, and the median will stay the same.

How to obtain the mean and the median of a data-set?

The mean of a data-set is given by the sum of all the observations in the data-set divided by the number of observations in the data-set.

Hence, if one observation is increased, the sum of all the observations also increases, and thus the mean of the data-set increases.

The median of a data-set is the middle value of the data-set, the value which 50% of the measures are less than and 50% are greater than.

The data-set in this problem has an odd cardinality of 5, meaning that the median is the third element of the data-set, which is not affected by the weight of the heaviest elephant, and thus the median remains constant.