Descriptive statistics Flashcards
What are measures of central tendency?
Mean, median and mode
What are measures of dispersion?
Range and standard deviation
What is the mean?
The arithmetic average
How do you calculate the mean?
Add up all the scores and divide by total number of scores
What is the median?
Th middle value when scores are arranged in order
What is the mode?
The most frequently occurring value
What is the range?
The difference between the highest and lowest values +1
What is standard deviation?
The average the scores deviate from the mean
What is an advantage of the mean?
It is a statistical average that is sensitive to all data as it includes whole data set so is more representative
What is a disadvantage of the mean?
It can be skewed by extreme values
What is an advantage often median?
It is not effected by extreme values
What is a disadvantage of the median?
It is not as sensitive or representative
What is an advantage of the mode?
It is the only way to give a ‘typical’ category
What is a disadvantage of the mode?
It doesn’t show the centre or majority value
What is a disadvantage of the range?
It doesn’t include all scores in the calculation
