Calculate measures of central tendency

Detailed Explanation: Calculate measures of central tendency

A measure of central tendency gives one value that represents a dataset. The three common measures are:

• Mean: Add all the values and divide by how many values there are.
• Median: Put the values in order and find the middle value.
• Mode: Find the value that occurs most often.

Example: The numbers of minutes seven students spent reading are:

1. Find the mean

Add the values:

There are $7$ values, so divide by $7$:

The mean is approximately $(7.86)$ minutes.

2. Find the median

The values are already in order:

There are $7$ values, so the middle value is the fourth value. The median is $6$ minutes.

If there were an even number of values, the median would be the mean of the two middle values.

3. Find the mode

The value $5$ occurs twice. Every other value occurs once, so the mode is $5$ minutes.

Therefore:

• Mean: $\boxed{7.86}$ minutes
• Median: $\boxed{6}$ minutes
• Mode: $\boxed{5}$ minutes

The value $(20)$ is much larger than the other values, so it acts like an unusually high value, or outlier. It pulls the mean upward, making the median a better description of a typical student’s reading time in this dataset.