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Under what circumstances is the median likely to produce a better measure of central tendency than the mean?

User Jrook
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1 Answer

3 votes

Answer:

With a skewed distribution and data with outliers.

Explanation:

There are three measures of central tendency.

  1. Mean: It is the average value of data and affected by presence of outliers.
  2. Median: It is the value that divides the data into two equal parts. It is a position based measure of tendency.
  3. Mode: It is the most frequent observation in the data.
  • For a symmetrical distribution for continuous data, the mean, median, and mode are equal.
  • For such case mean is a better measure of central tendency because it includes all of the data in the calculations.
  • Median is the best measure of central tendency when the data is not symmetrical because the median is position based.
  • Advantage of the median:

The median is not affected by outliers and skewed data as compared to the mean.

Thus, median likely to produce a better measure of central tendency than the mean with a skewed distribution and data with outliers.

User Jeffrey Godwyll
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