Maintaining Mathematical Proficiency
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Mean: about 77.2
Median: 82.5
Mode: 82
Which Measure Is Best? Median or mode.
The first thing that should be done when finding the key features of a data set is rearranging the numbers from least to greatest. 36, 82, 82, 83, 86, 94 Let's proceed to finding the mean, median, and mode.
Substitute values
Add terms
Calculate quotient
Round to 1 decimal place(s)
To identify the median, we observe the middle value. 36, 82, 82 | 83, 86, 94 Notice that there is no middle value. When this happens, we need to calculate the median by finding the average of the two values closest to the middle. When arranged from least to greatest, 82 and 83 are the most central values. Median=82+ 83/2=82.5
The mode of a data set is the value that occurs most frequently. 36, 82, 82, 83, 86, 94 We can see that 82 occurs more frequently than the other values, so there is one mode in this set.
Recall that the mean is highly influenced by values that are way greater or smaller than the rest of the values. Therefore, since 36 is much smaller than the rest of the values, the mean is not a good measure of the data. In this case, the best measure is the median. Another good measure would be the mode because it occurs the most frequently within the data.