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In statistics, a central tendency (or measure of central tendency) is a central or typical value for a probability distribution. [1] Colloquially, measures of central tendency are often called averages. 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 two measures are complementary in sense that if one knows the mid-range and the range, one can find the sample maximum and minimum values. The mid-range is rarely used in practical statistical analysis, as it lacks efficiency as an estimator for most distributions of interest, because it ignores all intermediate points, and lacks robustness ...
Some measures that are commonly used to describe a data set are measures of central tendency and measures of variability or dispersion. Measures of central tendency include the mean, median and mode, while measures of variability include the standard deviation (or variance), the minimum and maximum values of the variables, kurtosis and skewness ...
In descriptive statistics, the mean may be confused with the median, mode or mid-range, as any of these may incorrectly be called an "average" (more formally, a measure of central tendency). 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 ...
a measure of location, or central tendency, such as the arithmetic mean; a measure of statistical dispersion like the standard mean absolute deviation; a measure of the shape of the distribution like skewness or kurtosis; if more than one variable is measured, a measure of statistical dependence such as a correlation coefficient
The median is the corresponding measure of central tendency. The IQR can be used to identify outliers (see below). The IQR also may indicate the skewness of the dataset. [1] The quartile deviation or semi-interquartile range is defined as half the IQR. [7]
For example, the mean 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.
Descriptive statistics are most often concerned with two sets of properties of a distribution (sample or population): central tendency (or location) seeks to characterize the distribution's central or typical value, while dispersion (or variability) characterizes the extent to which members of the distribution depart from its center and each other.