Graphs, Distribution, Dispersion, Central Tendency Flashcards
(10 cards)
What are some advantages of the range?
-The range is easy to calculate
-Measure of dispersion that can be used with ordinal data
-Less time-consuming to calculate because you only have to take smalelst number away from largest number
What are some disadvantages of the range?
-Is affected by extreme values.
-Fails to take account of the distribution of the numbers,
EG: it doesn’t indicate whether most numbers are closely grouped around the mean or spread out evenly.
What are the advantages of Standard Deviation?
-Precise measure of dispersion because all the exact values are taken into account.
-Not difficult to calculate if you have a calculator.
-Outliers do not skew results
What are the disadvantages of Standard Deviation?
-May hide some of the characteristics of the data set (e.g. extreme values).
What is an advantage of a mean?
-Most sensitive measure of central tendency- takes account of the exact distance between all the values of all the data.
What are some disadvantages of a mean?
-Sensitivity= it can be easily distorted by one (or a few) extreme values so less representative of the data as a whole.
-Cannot be used with nominal data
What is an advantage of a median?
-Not affected by extreme scores so can be useful under such circumstances.
-Appropriate for ordinal data
-Can be easier to calculate
What is a disadvantage of a median?
-Not as ‘sensitive’ as the mean because the exact values are not reflected in the median.
What are the advantages of a mode?
-Mode = also unaffected by extreme values and is much more useful for discrete data
-Only method that can be used when the data are in categories, i.e. nominal data
What are the disadvantages of a mode?
-Not a useful way of describing data when there are several modes.
