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Chapter 2: Measures of Central Tendency
CHAPTER 2
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Measures of Central Tendency
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You should study the topics in this chapter if you need to review
or want to learn about
Numerical measures of central tendencies
How to compute these measures and investigate their properties
Means or averages
Medians
Modes
Shapes of distributions
2 - 1 Introduction
Once you read this chapter and study these topics you will recognize that the
measures discussed here deal with only one property of any data set. This
single property deals with the centrality of the data set. The measures
studied here will give some understanding of where the central tendency of
the data is located. However, you will need to combine these centrality
measures with other properties in order to fully understand the true nature of
the data set. Other properties for single variable data will be investigated in
other chapters.
Definition: Measure of Central Tendency
A measure of central tendency for a collection of data values is a number
that is meant to convey the idea of the central location for the data set.