Measures of Central Tendency extreme values.

It is the difference between the highest and the lowest values in the
A measure of central tendency is a single value that attempts to describe a set of data by distribution. R = HV – LV
identifying the central position within that set of data. As such, measures of central The variance is the average of the squared deviation of the values about the arithmetic
tendency are sometimes called measures of central location. mean. The sample variance can be obtained using the formula
Arithmetic Mean or simply mean is the sum of all values in a data set divided by the number ∑(𝑥−𝑥)2
𝑠 2 = 𝑛−1 x = individual value x = sample mean n = sample size
∑𝑥
of values that are summed. It is written mathematically as 𝑥 = 𝑛 where x = individual value While the sample standard deviation is
n = total number of values. The mean is a more stable or reliable measure of central 𝑠 = √𝑠 2
tendency in which its value is dependent upon every item in the data set. It is preferred for Example:
interval or ratio measurements and is used in the computation of some other advance A sample of six street vendors along San Pedro St. were surveyed and obtained their
statistical measures. average daily income as follows.
Median is the middlemost value in the data set. It is found midway between the highest and 560 320 440 650 200 490
the lowest value in a rank order distribution and divides the distribution into two equal Compute the variance and standard deviation of their income.
parts. It is not easily affected by the size of extreme values but by the number of items in
the data set. It is used to know whether the individual values fall within the upper halves or Measures of Relative Position
the lower halves of the distribution. In addition to measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion, there are measures
Mode is the value which occurs most frequently or has the highest frequency in the data of position, which are used to locate the relative position of value in the data set. Some of
set. It is the value that occurs most often, and its is not affected by the extreme values. these measures are percentiles, quartiles and deciles.
The quartiles divide the distribution into four equal parts.
Example. Compare the mean, the median, and mode for the salaries of 5 employees of a The deciles divide the distribution into ten equal parts.
small grocery store. Which averages could best represent the salaries of the employees? The percentiles divide the distribution into one hundred equal parts.
Salaries: 25,000 10,000 5,000 3,000 3,000
Mean: Median: Mode: Example
A nutritionist-dietician is doing a study on the factors that affect the weight of children,
Type of Variable Best Measure of Central Tendency identified as “severely wasted” in order to develop an effective feeding program. The weight
Nominal Mode
(in kg) of the 25 children are given below:
Ordinal Mean
Interval/Ratio (Normal Distribution) Mean 18 18 19 19 19 19 20 20 21 22 23 24 25 25 26 27
Interval/Ratio (Skewed Distribution) Median 29 29 30 30 30 30 31 31
a. What is the second quartile?
Measures of Dispersion b. What is the upper quartile?
The measures of central tendency give information about the center of data set. Such
c. What is D3?
descriptions, however, do not adequately describe the characteristic of the distribution. To
do this, we need to compute the degree of dispersion of the values from the average. These d. What is D8?
measures are called the measures of dispersion or variability. It describes how spread the e. What is P30?
individual values are from the average. Among these measures are the range, variance, and f. What is P80?
standard deviation.
g. What is P45?
The range is the simplest and the easiest to compute among the measures of dispersion, but
it is also the most unstable and the most reliable measure because it can be affected by the