Measures of Central Tendency

Numbers representing what is average or typical about a data set are called measures of central tendency.

• True

• False

If n data items are arranged in order, from smallest to largest, the data item in the middle is the value in...

• mean

• median

• (n+1)/2 position

• mode

When finding the mean, it is necessary to arrange the data items in order.

• True

• False

If one or more data items are much greater than the other items, the mean, rather than the median, is more representative of the data.

• True

• False

The ____________ is the measure of central tendency that represents the middle number in a set of data.

• Mode

• Average

• Principal

• Median

In order to find the ____________, we add up all of the numbers in the data set and then divide the sum by the number of numbers.

• Average

• Mode

• Upper Quartile

• Median

The number that appears the most in a data set is commonly known as the ___________.

• Mean

• Range

• Mode

• Average

The following data set represents the responses from students when they were asked how many siblings they had:

1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 7

What is the average number of siblings for this set of students?

• About 2.6

• 6

• About 18

• About 2.4

Measures of Central Tendency help us to relate numbers in a set of data to each other. For example, if the average student’s grade in your math class is an 81, we know that someone who has a grade of 97 is performing well ABOVE the average in that class. Amongst the following choices, which grade would represent a student performance that is considered well BELOW average?

• 80

• 75

• 77

• 62

The median of the top 50% of the number values in the data set is known as the _________________.

• Upper Extreme

• Principal

• Upper Quartile

• Range