Descripitive Statistics - Measures of Central Tendency

Descriptive statistics

The use of graphs, tables and summary statistics to identify trends and analyse sets of data

Measures of central tendency

The general term for any measure of the average value in a set of data

Mean

Calculated by adding up all the scores or values in a data set and dividing this figure by the total number of scores there are. The most sensitive as all the values of data are included, more representative of the data. Easily distorted by extreme values

Median

Middle value in a set of data when scores are arranged from lowest to highest. Extreme scores don’t affect the median, easy to calculate, less sensitive as not all of the scores are included

Mode

Most frequently occurring score/value within a data set. Easy to calculate but a crude measure. Used for categorical data