What are Measures of Central Tendency?
Central tendency refers to the centre value of the data. Measures of the Central Tendency calculate the central or middle value or the average of the given data. This is different from the measures of dispersion, which tells about the spread of the data values around the average. We can thus define Measures of Central Tendency as the methods of measuring the central tendency of the given data. There are various measures of the central tendency. The measures of the central tendency are mean, median and mode. Each of these measures differs in the way they calculate the central tendency or average of the given data.
The method of calculating mathematical average is termed as arithmetic mean. The measure that finds out the value which is present half-way in the data arranged in ascending order is termed as median. Most frequently occurring data is called as mode.
Features of Measures of Central Tendency
• For a normal data set, all the three measures give equal results.
• Unlike mode, the mean and median have only one value as the result.
Best Measure of Central Tendency
The best measure of central tendency depends upon the given data set, situation and the nature of analysis for which the central tendency has to be calculated. Let us see different situations and the appropriate measure of central tendency that is best suited for those situations.
Mean, Median or Mode
Any one of the three measures of central tendency mean, median or mode can be used to calculate the central tendency in case below:
• Data set containing numerical data or interval data.
• Data set containing continuous data.
Mean
It is the commonly used measure of central tendency for:
• Data set having mathematical data values.
• Data set used for statistical calculations or interference.
• Data set having no extreme values.
• Data set having symmetrical values.
Median
The data sets whose central tendency is to be measured using median are:
• Data set containing random numbers.
• Data set containing different numbers.
• Data set containing extreme values.
• Data set containing ordinal data or ranked data.
Mode
The data set whose central tendency is to be measured using mode are:
• Data set containing values that are closer or equal in value.
• Data set containing nominal data. Mode is the only measure of central tendency to measure nominal data or qualitative data. For example, Marital status
There are two scenarios when either median or mode can be applied. They are:
• Data set containing outliers
• Data set where data is skewed
