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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 ...
A measure of statistical dispersion is a nonnegative real number that is zero if all the data are the same and increases as the data become more diverse. Most measures of dispersion have the same units as the quantity being measured. In other words, if the measurements are in metres or seconds, so is the measure of dispersion.
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 ...
The measures of statistical dispersion derived from absolute deviation characterize various measures of central tendency as minimizing dispersion: The median is the measure of central tendency most associated with the absolute deviation. Some location parameters can be compared as follows:
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
m(X) is the chosen measure of central tendency of the data set—sometimes the mean (¯), but most often the median. The average absolute deviation (AAD) in statistics is a measure of the dispersion or spread of a set of data points around a central value, usually the mean or median.
Since the numbers of this scale have only a rank meaning, the appropriate measure of central tendency is the median. A percentile or quartile measure is used for measuring dispersion. Correlations are restricted to various rank order methods. Measures of statistical significance are restricted to the non-parametric methods (R. M. Kothari, 2004).
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.