How Do We Do This Ourselves? Calculate Measures of Central Tendency How do we calculate our measures of central tendency?

Mode: Find the value of the score with the highest frequency. Median: Find the value of the score that divides the distribution in half with 50% of scores above the median and 50% below the median. Mean: Take all the scores, add them up and divide by the total number of scores (N). Formula: (Sum of X/N)

Additional things to know:

The mean is the center of normal distributions. For skewed distributions - report both the mean and median. For normal distributions - the mean, median and mode are equal. The mean is unbiased on the average, sample means arent always too high or too low.

Where are we now! We now can make a frequency distribution and calculate three different measures of central tendency. Now we need measures of variability.

How Do We Do This Ourselves? Calculate Measures of Variability How do we calculate our measures of variability? Range: Substract the lower score in the data set from the highest score. Standard deviation: Calculate deviation scores by subtracting the mean from each score. Square each deviation score and add up the squared deviations. Divide by the total number of scores (N). Take the square root of the average squared deviations. Important Points

The standard deviation is the most commonly used measure of variability with measurement data. The range is subject to extremes. The variance equals the square of the standard deviation. Things to Know: 1. The standard deviation is a landmark on the normal curve. It reaches from the mean to the point of inflection of the normal distribution.The point of inflection is the point at which the curve changes direction. 2. Given the mathematics of the normal curve, there are always 68.26% of the scoresbetween the first standard deviation marks around the mean. 3. So if someone tells you the mean and standard deviation of a distribution, you can tell, the two scores that encompass a little more than 2/3s of your distribution. Important Points

Now lets look again at your shoe data If you had calculated the standard deviation (SD) of the distribution of shoe sizes and found out it was 2.0* you would know that 68.26% of males probably have shoe sizesbetween 7 and 11. This is 9 + 1 SD or 9 + 2. (Hint: look back at the shoe table with the normal curve in it and figure out the SD visually.)

Now you estimate how many pairs of shoes you might need for each shoe size by filling in the boxes under the curve. Preview: In z-scores you will see how to pin down these percentages even more exactly. Lets apply this to other situations! The mean IQ on the Stanford-Binet IQ test is 100. The Standard Deviation is 16. Thus68.26% of people have scores between 84 and 116. The mean of the SAT-V is 550 and the SD is 100. Thus 68.26% have scores between 450 and 650. One college reports its SAT-V mean has 600 and its SD is at 50. Another reports it as a mean of 500 and an SD of 100. You know that the first school is higher and less variable than the second is.

Additional things to know:

When you calculate the SD deviation from a sample (rather than a population) you divide by N 1 rather than N because sample SDs tend to be too small. The variance is useful later in comparing groups. If you have non-normal distributions, you might have to use the range and the median to summarize the central tendency and variability of the distribution.

Bottom Line

If you have a data set, you need to know whats typical and how all the scores are spread out. If you know this, you can better understand the data. We will see how this leads to better prediction and decision making. Bottom Line

If you have a data set, you need to know whats typical and how all the scores are spread out. If you know this, you can better understand the data. We will see how this leads to better prediction and decision making.

Summary

Measures of central tendency tell us about the scores that are most typical of a data set. The mean, median, and mode are the most widely used measures of central tendency. Measures of variability tell us how spread out, or dispersed, the scores are in a data set. The range and standard deviation are the most widely used measures of central tendency. The mean and standard deviation are usually used together. They tell us the center point of the data set and the average distance of each score from the center point. The median and range are usually used together. The median tells us the middle score, and the range tells us the distance between the lowest and highest score.