EXAMPLE 3.2.2

Survey question: How many semester hours are you taking this semester?

Responses: 15, 12, 18, 12, 15, 15, 12, 18, 15, 16

What was the typical response?

SOLUTION

Again, we could use the mean, the median or the mode to represent the typical response.

The mode is 15, since that value occurs more often than any of the other values.

To find the mean we first observe that the distribution contains 10 data points ("n = 10"), so the mean is the sum all 10 data points, divided by 10.

To find the median we first put the numbers in numerical order, and then find the "middle number." However, since there are an even number of data points, there will be two numbers in the middle of the list, not just one number:

12, 12, 12, 15, 15, 15, 15, 16, 18, 18

The median will be the average of the two middle numbers. Since both of these numbers are 15, their average is 15. The median is 15.