Question

Name three measures of central tendency. Define each of the three measures. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using the mean to describe a set of scores.

Answer 1

There are three main measures of central tendency: the mean, the median and the mode:

• The mean is the sum of the value of each observation in a dataset divided by the number of observations.
• The median is the middle value in distribution when the values are arranged in ascending or descending order.
• The mode is the most commonly occurring value in a distribution.

The mean is the most frequently used measure of central tendency. An advantage of the mean is that it can be used for both continuous and discrete numeric data. However, the mean cannot be calculated for categorical data, as the values cannot be summed. Another limitation arises from the fact that the mean includes every value in the distribution and is therefore easily influenced by outliers and skewed distributions.