can anyone tell me how to do this??? i was absent when we went over it in class!!?

Question

what is the best measure of central tendency (mean, median, mode) for each type of data? explain.
a. allowance
b. favorite ceral
c. hours in a school day
d. spelling test scores
f. eye color
g. new car cost


...sry im so stuck!!

Answer 1

they're all the average of something
mean- add the numbers together and divide by the amount of #s
median-middle number
mode- number used most

Answer 2

Do you know the definitions of each of the terms? They should be in your textbook. To get the mean, you add a series of values and divide by the number of values you added. For median, list all the values in numeric order, and take the middle one. Mode means the value that shows up most often.

Now think about those in relation to your list of types of data.

Allowance - if two rich kids get $2000 a week allowance, 11 kids get $10 a week, and 10 other kids get $15 a week allowance, will you be able to convince your dad that you should get the average (mean) or $213? Probably not. But you might make an argument for the mode (most common) or $10, or the median (middle value) of $15. You'd probably argue that since half the kids get at least $15, that would be fair for you to get.

Central tendency is defined on dictionary.com as "the tendency of samples of a given measurement to cluster around some central value." So for allowance, central tendency would be median.

Next one: favorite cereal - the only thing that makes sense here is mode, the favorite, the most common.

hours in a school day - different places have different lengths of school days, but all are probably fairly close. If you add up the hours in each school's day, and divide by the number of schools, the times will probably be clustered around that. So mean is a good measure of central tendency.

Spelling test scores in a class probably vary quite a bit - some kids with 100%, a few with hardly anything spelled right, and most with many but not all of the words spelled right. Here, lining them up best to worst, and picking the middle one, might be the best measure of how the class as a whole did - that would be median. Mean (adding up all the scores and dividing by the number of students) would also be a possible answer, but that gives a little too much weight to the scores at the top and bottom.

Eye color - kind of like favorite cereal - what's the most common (mode).

New car cost - middle value (median) probably the most representative. Mean gives too much weight to the Ferrari's and Lambourghini's. Mode - if more people buy cheap cars, might bias the answer that way.

Most of these answers are not absolute - you could make an argument in some cases for another answer. I think the teacher is just trying to get you to think about what thost different measures mean, and how they relate to the real world instead of just math class.

Answer 3

Examine each tendency and decide if it can even be calculated for the specific problem...

a. Allowance... ok, this one you can add up and find the mean, the median, and the mode...

what is the liklyhood that any two allowances will be the same? and thus represent a true central tendency? if you use the Mode?... now you decide what to do for the mean and the median...

then you decide which one more accurately represents the middle of the data.

Answer 4

Well, go over your definitions for each type of average -

one is taking all of your numbers, adding them together, then dividing by how many numbers you added

one is the number that's in the middle of your numbers

and one is the number in the group that appears the most

Find out which one is which. (I'm not going to give you the ENTIRE answer!)

So for example, spelling test scores, if I had a
17, 92, 92, 93, 94, 95, and 100 one avg would come to 92, one would come to 93, and one would come to 83.3. Now, if I were a student, I would want the average that came out to 93, not 83.3. All three answers are right as far as averages, but you need to pick the one that makes most sense.


Hope this helps a LITTLE.

Answer 5

ok so the mean is when u take the average..... useful if your data is generally similar

median is when you have extremes, and want the number in the middle
and mode is for what number occurs most often ... misleading if the highest number occurs twice and all the other numbers are significantly lower and occur only once (just an ex)

hope that somewhat helped

Answer 6

a. mean
b. mode
c. mean
d. mean
f. mode
g. median

Answer 7

Guessing u dont need help now?

Answer 8

what cat said

Answer 9

I don't know but I can awsner all of them!