This week we really started looking at the ways to evaluate a sample of numbers using statistics. WE evaluated several samples using the common ways of measuring central tendencies, Mead, Median, and Mode. It was interesting to learn that the Mean is not always the best way to evaluate a sample, as it could be thrown off by a single outlying value. You should also look at the median and the Mode, as they might help you find out is the data being affected by one or more values on the ends, or if the data is closely grouped around the center.
Comparing the central tendencies to each other can also give you a lot of information, for example if the mean is to the right or left of the median, then that can tell you something about the data. It is obvious that we will need to do a lot more evaluation and comparison of the central tendencies, as well as look at the data sample as a whole, in order to get the best picture of the results.
In the future we will be looking at how to collect data for evaluation. I can see that designing a survey that will not bias the results is going to be a challenge.
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