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The term central tendency dates from the late 1920s. [2] The most common measures of central tendency are the arithmetic mean, the median, and the mode. A middle tendency can be calculated for either a finite set of values or for a theoretical distribution, such as the normal distribution.
In statistics, the mode is the value that appears most often in a set of data values. [1] If X is a discrete random variable, the mode is the value x at which the probability mass function takes its maximum value (i.e., x=argmax x i P(X = x i)).
The median of a symmetric unimodal distribution coincides with the mode. The median of a symmetric distribution which possesses a mean μ also takes the value μ. The median of a normal distribution with mean μ and variance σ 2 is μ. In fact, for a normal distribution, mean = median = mode.
For n = 1 or 2, the midrange and the mean are equal (and coincide with the median), and are most efficient for all distributions. For n = 3, the modified mean is the median, and instead the mean is the most efficient measure of central tendency for values of γ 2 from 2.0 to 6.0 as well as from −0.8 to 2.0.
The normal distribution with density () (mean and variance >) has the following properties: It is symmetric around the point =, which is at the same time the mode, the median and the mean of the distribution. [22]
For example, the mean or average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, and 9 (summing to 25) is 5. Depending on the context, the most representative statistic to be taken as the average might be another measure of central tendency, such as the mid-range, median, mode or geometric mean.
The mean of a set of observations is the arithmetic average of the values; however, for skewed distributions, the mean is not necessarily the same as the middle value (median), or the most likely value (mode). For example, mean income is typically skewed upwards by a small number of people with very large incomes, so that the majority have an ...
In descriptive statistics, the range of a set of data is size of the narrowest interval which contains all the data. It is calculated as the difference between the largest and smallest values (also known as the sample maximum and minimum). [1] It is expressed in the same units as the data. The range provides an indication of statistical ...