Statistics and Probability
STT-500
BS(CS) 2A
Course instructor:
Chapter: 3
Week #4
Measures of Central Tendency
OR
Averages
Outlines
• Introduction to measures of central tendency
• The Arithmetic mean and its properties
• The Geometric Mean
• The Harmonic Mean
• The median
Introduction
• What is Central Tendency?
Central tendency is a descriptive summary of a
dataset through a single value that reflects the center
of the data distribution. Along with the variability
(dispersion) of a dataset, central tendency is a branch
of descriptive statistics.
The central tendency is one of the most quintessential
concepts in statistics. Although it does not provide
information regarding the individual values in the
dataset, it delivers a comprehensive summary of the
whole dataset.
1- The Arithmetic Mean
• The arithmetic mean of a set of values is the
ratio of their sum to the total number of values
in the set. Thus, if there are a total of n
numbers in a data set whose values are given
by a group of x-values, then the arithmetic
mean of these values, represented by ' ', can
be found using this formula:
•
Example
There are 10 students in a class. The students take an exam
and their scores out of 100 are 75, 82, 69, 99, 78, 91, 87,
82, 93, 77. What is the arithmetic mean of the scores? Does
this mean seem to represent an average student in the class?
Sol: The arithmetic mean is (75 + 82 + 69 + 99 + 78 + 91 +
87 + 82 + 93 + 77)/(10) = 83.3. This is a reasonable
depiction of an average student in the class - the scores
ranged from the upper 60s to upper 90s, with half of the
students scoring between 77 and 87. The arithmetic mean
of 83.3 seems like it matches the class well.
• Mean of tabulated data:
If x1, x2, x3, x4, ……. xn are n observations, and f1, f2,
f3, f4, ……. fn represent frequency of n observations.
Then mean of the tabulated data is given by
𝑋 = (f1 x1 + f2 x2 + f3 x3 + ……. fn xn)/(f1 + f2 + f3 +
…… fn) =∑(fixi)/∑fi
Example
A die is thrown 20 times and the following scores were
recorded 6, 3, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 1, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 1, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6,
2. Prepare the frequency table of scores on the upper
face of the die and find the mean score.
Mean of grouped data:
Properties of Arithmetic Mean
Some important properties of the arithmetic mean are as
follows:
• The sum of deviations of the items from their
arithmetic mean is always zero, i.e. ∑(x – X) = 0.
• The sum of the squared deviations of the items from
Arithmetic Mean (A.M) is minimum, which is less
than the sum of the squared deviations of the items
from any other values.
• If each item in the arithmetic series is substituted by
the mean, then the sum of these replacements will be
equal to the sum of the specific items.
2- The Geometric Mean
• The Geometric Mean (G.M) of a series containing n
observations is the nth root of the product of the
values.
• Consider, if x1 , x2 …. Xn are the observation, then the
G.M is defined as:
G.M for grouped data:
Difference between Geometric Mean And
Arithmetic Mean
Question for ungrouped data:
Question For grouped data
Solution:
3- The Harmonic Mean
The Harmonic Mean (HM) is defined as the
reciprocal of the arithmetic mean of the given data
values. It is based on all the observations, and it is
rigidly defined. Harmonic mean gives less
weightage to the large values and large weightage
to the small values to balance the values properly.
In general, the harmonic mean is used when there
is a necessity to give greater weight to the smaller
items. It is applied in the case of times and average
rates.
Harmonic Mean Formula
• Since the harmonic mean is the reciprocal of
the arithmetic mean, the formula to define the
harmonic mean “H” is given as follows:
• If x1, x2, x3,…, xn are the individual items up to
n terms, then,
• If the frequencies “f” is supposed to be the
weights “w”, then the harmonic mean is
calculated as follows:
• If x1, x2, x3,…., xn are n items with
corresponding frequencies f1, f2, f3, …., fn, then
the weighted harmonic mean is
Question
4- The Median
• Median of a group of observation is the value which lies
in the middle of the data (when arranged in an ascending
or descending order) with half of the observations above
it and the other half below it.
• When the number of observations (n) is odd.
• Then, median is (n + 1)/2 th observation.
• When the number of observations (n) is even.
• Then median is the mean of (n/2)th and (n +1/2)th
observation.
i.e., Median =
Question
• Find the median of the data 25, 37, 47, 18, 19, 26, 36.
• Solution:
• Arranging the data in ascending order, we get 18, 19, 25, 26, 36, 37, 47
• Here, the number of observations is odd, i.e., 7.
• Therefore, median = (n + 1/2)th observation.
= (7 + 1/2)th observation.
= (8/2)th observation
= 4th observation.
4th observation is 26.
• Therefore, median of the data is 26.
Question
Find the median of the data 24, 33, 30, 22, 21, 25, 34, 27.
• Solution:
• Here, the number of observations is even, i.e., 8.
• Arranging the data in ascending order, we get 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 30, 33, 34
• Therefore, median = {(n/2)th observation + (n + 1/2)th observation}/2
= (8/2)th observation + (8/2 + 1)th observation
= 4th observation + (4 + 1)th observation
= {25 + 27}/2
= 52/2
= 26
• Therefore, the median of the given data is 26.
Median for grouped data
• Question:1
• Solution:
Question.2
Question.3
The ages of the people at a youth camp are summarized in the table below.
Estimate the median age.
Age (years) 6–8 9 – 11 12 – 14 15 – 17
Frequency 8 22 29 5
