3.

Describing Data: Numerical Measures

Introduction
- Two numerical ways of describing quantitative data are measures of location (average) and
measures of dispersion
- measures of location’s purpose are to pinpoint the center of a distribution of data
- average shows the central values of a data
- additionally, to measures of location, dispersion/variation of the spread in the data
o range, variance, and the standard deviation

Measures of Location
- five measures of location:
o arithmetic mean
 most widely used/reported measure of location
o median
o mode
o weighted mean
o geometric mean
- The Population Mean
o Population mean = all values / number of values in the population

(mu)

o Any measurable characteristics of a population is called parameter

- The Sample Mean
o sample mean = values in the sample / number of values in the sample
o statistic = a characteristic of a sample

x bar =

- Properties of the Arithmetic Mean

o Data must be measured at the interval or ration level
o All the values are included in computing the mean
o Mean is unique
o Sum of deviations of each value from the mean is zero

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 o Weakness: mean uses all the value. This includes extremes too. If the dataset is widely
spread the mean might represent the data inaccurately.
- The Median
o The center for such data is better described by a measure of a location called the
median
o The midpoint of the values after they have been ordered from the minimum to the
maximum
o Major properties:
 It is not affected by extreme large or small values
 It can be computed for ordinal-level data or higher
- The Mode
o The value of observation that appears most frequently
o Can be determined for all kinds of data (nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio)
o Frequency tables will help determining the value with the most frequency
- The Relative Position of the Mean, Median and Mode

- The Weighted Mean

o Convenient way to compute the arithmetic mean when there are several observations
of the same value (numbers of each group must be known).

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 x bar sub
- The Geometric Mean
o Useful for finding the average change of percentages, ratios, indexes, or growths rates
over time

o Will always be less than or equal to (never more than) the arithmetic mean
o All the data values must be positive
o Rate of increase over time

Why study dispersion?

- Measures of location don’t include the spread of the data
- We need measures of dispersion (range, variance, standard deviation)

- Range
o Simplest measure of dispersion
o Difference between the maximum and minimum

- Variance
o Arithmetic mean of the squared deviations from the mean
o All observations are used in the calculation

o The square root of the population variance is the population standard deviation

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 o Sample Variance (page 77)

o Sample Standard Deviation (page 78)

 It is in the same units as the original data
 It is the square root of the average squared distance from the mean
 It cannot be negative
 Most widely reported measure of dispersion

Interpretation and uses of the standard deviation

- Commonly used as a measure to compare the spread in two or more sets of observations
o Arithmetic mean of the squared deviations from the mean

- Chebyshev’s Theorem (page 80)

o For any set of observations (sample or population), the proportion of the values that lie
within k standard deviations of the mean is at least 1-1/k^2, where k is any value greater
than 1
o Distribution of values can have any shape
- The Empirical Rule
o More precise in explaining
o Empirical Rule: For a symmetrical, bell-shaped frequency distribution, approximately 68
% of the observations will lie within plus and minus one standard deviation of the mean,
about 95 % of the observations will lie within plus and minus two standard deviations of
the mean, and practically all (99.7%) will lie within plus and minus three standard
deviations of the mean.

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The Mean and Standard Deviation of Groped Data
- Sometimes we are given only the frequency distribution and wish to estimate the mean or
standard deviation
- Mean or standard deviation from grouped data is an estimate of the corresponding actual
values
- Arithmetic Mean of Grouped Data (Page 82)

- Standard Deviation of Grouped Data (Page 83)

o Subtract the mean from the class midpoint
o Square the difference between the class midpoint and the mean
o Multiply the squared difference between the class midpoint and the mean by the class
frequency
o Sum the ()

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