Question

Why do you think the mean, medium and mode is so important in data collection? please do not define mean, median and mode, provide examples when answering the question.

Answer 1

Mode

When looking at a set of information, the mode is simply the number that occurs most often in the set. Imagine that you live in a small town where most of the people are employed by a factory and earn minimum wage. One of the factory owners lives in the town and his salary is in the millions of dollars. If you use a measure like the average to try to compare salaries in the town as a whole, the owner's income would severely throw off the numbers. This is where the mode can be useful in the real world. When looking at a set of information, the mode is simply the number that occurs most often in the set. Imagine that you live in a small town where most of the people are employed by a factory and earn minimum wage. One of the factory owners lives in the town and his salary is in the millions of dollars. If you use a measure like the average to try to compare salaries in the town as a whole, the owner's income would severely throw off the numbers. This is where the measure of mode can be useful in the real world. It tells you what most of the pieces of data are doing within a set of information .It tells you what most of the pieces of data are doing within a set of information.

Mean:

The mean is commonly referred to as average, but it is not the only kind of average. The mean is often used in research, academics and in sports. When you watch a baseball game and you see the player's batting average, that number represents the total number of hits divided by the number of times at bat. In other words, that number is the mean. In school, the final grade you get in a course is usually a mean. This mean represents the total number of points you scored in the class divided by the number of possible points. This is the classic type of average – when your overall performance on many items is evaluated with a single number.

Median

Although the mean is the most common type of average, the median can also be used to express the average of a group. The median number in a group refers to the point where half the numbers are above the median and the other half are below it. You may hear about the median salary for a country or city. When the average income for a country is discussed, the median is most often used because it represents the middle of a group. Mean allows very high or very low numbers to sway the outcome but median is an excellent measure of the center of a group of data.