Measure of Central Tendency: Mean, Median, & Mode

Aloha friends,

Measure of central tendency, what an intimidating & scary phrase! It's probably best to put that word aside. Let's say, in the closet. We're going to put that phrase into the closet, along with a lot of other words we might come across I imagine. So from this point forward, if I'm putting a word in the "closet" then it's probably not necessary to remember at this point in our learning. The measure of central tendency breaks down to the mean, median, and mode of data. More intimidating words, at least to me they are...let's break those bad boys down to the bare essentials. 

The mean is another word for the average. To the find the average of any numbers, we must add all of the numbers together and divide that number by how many numbers were added together. For instance, what's the average of 5, 5, 10, 15, 5, 10?

1) First, add all of the numbers...  5 +5 + 10 + 15 + 5 + 10 = 50

2) Second, divide the number by how many numbers were added together (6).

50/6  =    8.3333

3) The average number is 8.333. 

The median is the literally the middle number when all of the numbers are lined up in numerical order. 

So using our past numbers: 5, 5, 10, 15, 5, 10 we're going to find the median.

1) List the numbers in numerical order, smallest to largest or largest to smallest (smallest to largest makes more sense to me personally). 5, 5, 5, 10, 10, 15

2) Find the middle number, if the middle number can't be found because there is an even number of values then averaging the two middle ones gives you the median. For instance, add 5 + 10 = 15 ... divide by 15/2 = 7.5. The median is 7.5. Our math teacher says it's easy to remember median by thinking of medium. 

The mode is "data value that occurs most often." Looking over our data set: 5, 5, 5, 10, 10, 15 we can see that 5 occurs the most often so the mode is 5. Our math teacher says it's easy to remember mode by thinking of most. 

Carpe diem, 

Cass

* Links to other helpful websites about the measure of central tendency:
1) Kids Math Games -
http://www.kidsmathgamesonline.com/numbers/meanmedianmode.html
2) Measure of Central Tendency Rap Song -
http://pinterest.com/pin/122582421080180899/