Measures of Tendency and Dispersion
Identifying the mean, median, and/or mode for a dataset or a group is values is not challenging. What may be challenging is to know which of those three is the proper measure of center for a dataset.
Do some research on the differences of those measures, and provide a specific example when only one of those is appropriate.
Example: If I review the prices of vegetables in my local supermarket that sells 147 different produce types, I just need to find the mean of those. The reason is that all have a common property, that they are all sold to the same customers. There is no significant difference on their prices – I just want to know what is the center price per pound for the vegetables. Is it true, though, that the average (mean) of produce prices per pound will always be the center? If instead I had to do the same experiment in a small store of herbs and spices, should I use the mean or the median and why?
SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT
