Measurement of Central Tendency of Data using Mean, Median and Mode

Measuring the central tendency of data is always the first step to analyse the data. We use different techniques like calculating the mean, median or at times mode to understand the data.

Mean: Mean is nothing but the average of numerical values present in data. Mean can be calculated by adding all the elements in the data and dividing them by total number of observations. Formula for calculating the mean looks like:

E.g. find the mean of x = [12, 18, 13, 14, 15, 16, 14, 21, 13]

Median: Median is nothing but the middle number of the data sorted in ascending or descending order. To calculate median follow these steps:

Step 1: Sort the data in ascending or descending order

Step 2: Count the total number of observations (n)

If total number of observations (n) is odd then calculate median using this formula:

If total number of observations (n) is even then calculate median using this formula:

E.g. Q 1. Find the median of x = [12, 18, 13, 14, 15, 16, 14, 21, 13]

E.g. Q 2. Find the median of x = [12, 18, 13, 14, 15, 16, 14, 21, 13,12]

Mode: Mode is the value that occurs the most often in a data.

E.g. Find the mode of x = [12, 18, 13, 14, 15, 16,13, 14, 21, 13]

Mode = 13

Note: If multiple values occur most often in the data then all those values are considered as mode values.

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