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Measures of Central Tendency
These
are statistics that attempt to describe typical scores that reflect
how the data is similar. The average is a commonly used term; in statistics
this includes 3 different expressions: the mean,
median and mode.
The
appropriateness of which measure to use depends on the data
type (see below), and its use:
Data
type
|
Average
|
| |
Mode
|
Median
|
Mean
|
| Nominal |
|
|
|
| Ordinal |
|
|
|
| Interval/Ratio |
|
|
|
Note: In addition
it is good practice to quote one or more of these statistics with the
relevant measure of dispersion.
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