Singapore Polytechnic

MS508S - Facts and Lies in Everyday Data

Topic 1: Measures of Central Tendency Activity 1
As a new trainee in the Marketing Departing of XYZ Company, your boss (Mr. Big) has tasked you to determine the average time people in your department spend on the phone on Christmas Eve. Mr. Big suspects that your colleagues spend too much time on the phone; possibly more than 20% of their official working time. Official working hours in your company on Christmas Eve is from 9:00am to 12:00 noon. As an enthusiastic young employee, you decide to monitor the time each person in your department spends on the phone on the 24th of December 2008 and report your findings to Mr. Big. Your data is recorded to the nearest minute in the table below. Employee Andrew Belinda Charles Denise Eric Fiona Georgina Time 19 20 21 23 10 29 152

Table 1: Amount of time each person in your department spends on the phone Prepare a report on your findings to Mr. Big by answering the following questions: 1. Determine the mean time people in your department spend on the phone on 24th of December 2008. 2. Using the mean obtained in Question 1, calculate the percentage of official working time employees in your department spend on the phone on Christmas Eve. 3. Enter your data in excel and confirm your calculation in question 1 by using the =AVERAGE() function in Microsoft excel. 4. Determine the median time people in your department spend on the phone on 24th of December 2008.

Copyright 2009 by Singapore Polytechnic, Singapore. All rights reserved.

5. Confirm your calculation in question 4 by using the =MEDIAN() function in Microsoft excel. 6. Using the median, calculate the percentage of official working time that is spent on the phone. 7. Explain why the value of the mean is significantly larger than the median. The following questions may help you. a. Who spends the least amount of time on the phone? Calculate the mean and the median if this person is removed from your dataset. Is the value of the mean still significantly larger than the median? b. Who spends the most amount of time on the phone? Calculate the mean and the median if this person is removed from your dataset. Is the value of the mean still significantly larger than the median? 2. Which value, mean or median, do you think provides a more accurate representation of central tendency (the centre of this particular dataset)? Why? (this is the figure that you will be reporting to Mr. Big) 3. Is the mode a useful measure of the centre of the data in this case? Why? 4. Consider the following situations. Discuss if the mode is a good measure of central tendency. a. A teacher wanting to determine the centre of a dataset containing marks her student scored on a particular test b. A sandwich shop selling 10 different types of sandwiches wants to determine which is the most popular sandwich c. A teacher wanting to determine whether most students in her class come by bus, mrt or car. 5. Considering your answers in Question 10, when is using the mode a good measure of central tendency? 6. The following table (taken from Wikipedia, with reference to department of statistics) shows the mean and median household income of Singapore families in 1990 and 2000. In both cases, the value of the mean is significantly higher than the median. What could cause this discrepancy? Which do you think is a better representation of the average household income of a Singapore family?

Copyright 2009 by Singapore Polytechnic, Singapore. All rights reserved.

Mean household income (SGD$) 1990 Total 3,076 2000 4,943

Median household income (SGD$) 1990 2,296 2000 3,607

Table 2: Mean and median household income of Singapore families 7. Write a short reflection of what you have learned from this activity.

Copyright 2009 by Singapore Polytechnic, Singapore. All rights reserved.