MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY-MEAN,MEDIAN & MODE
A measure of central tendency is a summary statistic that represents the center point or typical value of a dataset. These measures indicate where most values in a distribution fall and are also referred to as the central location of a distribution. You can think of it as the tendency of data to cluster around a middle value. In statistics, the three most common measures of central tendency are the mean, median, and mode. Each of these measures calculates the location of the central point using a different method.
Choosing the best measure of central tendency depends on the type of data you have. In this post, I explore these measures of central tendency, show you how to calculate them, and how to determine which one is best for your data.
The mean, median and mode are all valid measures of central tendency, but under different conditions, some measures of central tendency become more appropriate to use than others. In the following sections, we will look at the mean, mode and median, and learn how to calculate them and under what conditions they are most appropriate to be used.
Also Central tendency is a descriptive summary of a dataset through a single value that reflects the center of the data distribution. Along with the variability (dispersion) of a dataset, central tendency is a branch of descriptive statistics.
The central tendency is one of the most quintessential concepts in statistics. Although it does not provide information regarding the individual values in the dataset, it delivers a comprehensive summary of the whole dataset.
Measures of Central Tendency
Generally, the central tendency of a dataset can be described using the following measures:
- Mean (Average): Represents the sum of all values in a dataset divided by the total number of the values.
- Median: The middle value in a dataset that is arranged in ascending order (from the smallest value to the largest value). If a dataset contains an even number of values, the median of the dataset is the mean of the two middle values.
- Mode: Defines the most frequently occurring value in a dataset. In some cases, a dataset may contain multiple modes, while some datasets may not have any mode at all.
Even though the measures above are the most commonly used to define central tendency, there are some other measures, including, but not limited to, geometric mean, harmonic mean, midrange, and geometric median.
The selection of a central tendency measure depends on the properties of a dataset. For instance, the mode is the only central tendency measure for categorical data, while a median works best with ordinal data.
Although the mean is regarded as the best measure of central tendency for quantitative data, that is not always the case. For example, the mean may not work well with quantitative datasets that contain extremely large or extremely small values. The extreme values may distort the mean. Thus, you may consider other measures.
