SOC222H5 Lecture 2: Lecture 2 – Central Tendency and Dispersion
Document Summary
A measure of central tendency is a measure of the average or most typical value, the centre of gravity . It is any measure of the tendency of quantitative data to cluster around some central value . The three main types are mode, median and mean. These measures are only equivalent (when they are also all appropriate) under special conditions. Often (and only in those situations for which more than one measure of central tendency is actually appropriate), it can be useful to report more than one measure of central tendency. This is the most common value in any vector of number. It is possible for a distribution of varobale values to have zero modes or one or more modes (unimodal, bimodal multimodal) This is the middle value in any vector of numbers. It is the middle case in an ordered list of variable values. It is the 50th percentile, dividing the distribution into two equal parts.
