Chapter Four

Measures of Central Tendency

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
 Descriptive statistics
(a)Population - A population is the group from
which data are to be collected.
(b) Sample - A sample is a subset of a population.
(c) Variable - A variable is a feature characteristic of
any member of a population differing in quality or
quantity from one member to another.
(d) Quantitative variable - A variable differing in
quantity is called quantitative variable, for example,
the weight of a person, number of people in a car.

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
(e) Qualitative variable - A variable differing in
quality is called a qualitative variable or attribute,
for example, color, the degree of damage of a car in
an accident.
(f) Discrete variable - A discrete variable is one
which no value may be assumed between two given
values, for example, number of children in a family.
(h) Continuous variable - A continuous variable is
one which any value may be assumed between two
given values, for example, the time for 100-meter
run.

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
 Descriptive statistics
Are mathematical concepts that describe–as the
name implies–the characteristics of a sample.
In this chapter only the basic descriptive will be
covered.
When given a set of raw data one of the most
useful ways of summarizing that data is to find an
average of that set of data. An average is a
measure of the center of the data set.
There are three common ways of describing the
center of a set of numbers. They are the mean, the
median, and the mode.
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
 Measurement Scales
• Understanding descriptive statistics requires paying
attention to the type of data that are being described.
• As a review, recall that we distinguish among four types of
measurement scales: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.
1. Nominal scales simply place numeric labels on otherwise
non-quantitative concepts, such as giving males a value of
“1” and females “2”.
• Many category schemes are essentially nominal variables,
such as religion, nationality, and ethnic group.
• In some research studies, we count how many people fall
into the levels of a category system, such as how many of
our subjects come from various nations.
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
2. Ordinal scales allow us to rank items in a
comparative manner, such as rank in a class
• Mathematical operations cannot be performed
on ordinal data.
3. Interval scales allow us to assign values to
levels of a phenomena such that the numeric
values are on an equal interval scale, such as a 5-
point attitude scale.
• Because the values are on an equal interval
scale, we can do some mathematical operations
such as adding and averaging on such data.
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
4. Ratio scales are interval scales with a true
zero point, such as weight or number of
observed behaviors.
Having a true zero point allows us to form ratios
with such data.

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
 Central Tendency
• When we work with numerical data, it seems
apparent that in most set of data there is a
tendency for the observed values to group
themselves about some interior values; some
central values seem to be the characteristics of the
data.
• This phenomenon is referred to as central tendency.
• We often need to find the middle of a distribution.
• The middle point has various meaning depending
on the measurement scale on which the data were
collected.
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
1. The Mode
• On a nominal scale, the “middle” is the most
frequent category, termed the mode.
• In a sample of Introductory Psychology subject
pool research participants, we might look at
the distribution of participants on the nominal
scale “nation of origin.” For example, if the
subject swimming pool had 100 students:

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
US citizens of all ethnic groups:.............. 75
French:.....................................................10
Indian:........................................................5
East Asian (all nations combined):.............5
Arab (all nations combined):......................3
Caribbean (all nations combined):..............2
The most common category of this sample is US
citizens, so the mode is “US citizens.”

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
20, 18, 15, 15, 14, 12, 11, 9, 7, 6, 4, 1
The value for the mode of the data 15
(unimodal)
{2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7}
– Mode = 2 or 7 (Bimodal)

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
• The mode can be used with any measurement
scale. On a 5-point Likert opinion scale, we
might find this distribution of responses:
(values are counts of how many people out of
a sample of 100 chose each answer)
– Strongly agree:............... .10
– Agree:.............................. 15
– Neutral:........................... 20
– Disagree:......................... 35
– Strongly disagree:.......... .20
The modal response is “disagree.”
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
2. The Median
• The median requires ordinal, interval or ratio
scale data. Such measures can be ranked, and
the middle case (i.e., person) in the ranking can
be identified.
• For example, it is common to rank all
Americans according to their incomes and
determine the median income. “Median cost of
single family house” is also commonly reported.
Here are the yearly salaries of the Psychology
department faculty, ranked:
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
Dean.............................................$350,000
Undergrad Chair ......................... $250,000
Director of Clinical Training..........$225,000
Chair of I/O Program.................... $185,000
Chair of ABA Program.................. $185,000
Faculty member #1.......................$150,000
Faculty member #2...................... $140,000
Faculty member #3...................... $130,000
Faculty member #4...................... $120,000
Faculty member #5.......................$110,000
Faculty member #6.......................$105,000
Faculty member #7.......................$104,000
Faculty member #8.......................$103,000
Faculty member #9...................... $103,000
Faculty member #10 ....................$101,000
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
median formula is {(n + 1)/2}th
For example, the middle for this set of numbers
is 5, because 5 is right in the middle:
1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9
Apply the formula, then you will get the same
result
20, 18, 15, 15, 14, 12, 11, 9, 7, 6, 4, 1 is ?

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
• First, note that all faculty earn six-figure
incomes, because they are brilliant and work
so hard.1 The middle of this distribution is
Faculty member #3, earning a cool $130K. So
“the median psychology faculty income” is
$130,000.
3. Mean
Arithmetic average of all numbers; the sum of all
values divided by the total number of values.

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
•  18 23 20 21 24 23 20 20 15 19 24
μ,= 20.64.
• The formula to find the sample mean is: μ = ( Σ
xi ) / n. Mean =
Number of Pets Tally Frequency
0 ||⁄|| |||∕| | 11
1 |||| 4
2 ||| 3
3 | 1
4 | 1

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
• Mean=600 + 470 + 170 + 430 + 3005  
• 5 = 1970/5  
= 394
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
• For symmetrically distributed data, the mean,
median and mode can be used almost
interchangeably.
• Physically, mean can be interpreted as the
center of gravity of the distribution.
• Median divides the area of the distribution
into two equal parts and mode is the highest
point of the distribution.

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
 Measures of Dispersion
• While measures of central tendency are used
to estimate "normal" values of a dataset,
measures of dispersion are important for
describing the spread of the data
• Dispersion in statistics is a way of describing
how spread out a set of data is.
• When a data set has a large value, the values
in the set are widely scattered; when it is small
the items in the set are tightly clustered.
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
1. Variance: is the expectation of the squared
deviation of a random variable from its
mean. Informally, it measures how far a set
of (random) numbers are spread out from
their average value.
 Is a statistical measure of how much a set of
observations differ from each other.

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
Variance (Mean squared differences)

Example; 9, 2, 5, 4, 12, 7

6.25 + 20.25 + 2.25 + 6.25 + 30.25 + 0.25 =

65.5
So, 65.5/5, =13.1

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
•2.  Standard deviation
• The standard deviation is a statistic that tells
you how tightly all the various examples are
clustered around the mean in a set of data.

• So, = 3.619

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
3. Range
The range is the difference between the highest
and lowest values within a set of numbers.
Given that the range can easily be computed
with information on the maximum and
minimum value of the data set, users requiring
only a rough indication of the data may prefer to
use this indicator over more sophisticated
measures of spread, like the standard deviation.

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
 Frequency Distribution
• Statistical data obtained by means of census,
sample surveys or experiments usually consist
of raw, unorganized sets of numerical values.
• Before these data can be used as a basis for
inferences about the phenomenon under
investigation or as a basis for decision, they
must be summarized and the pertinent
information must be extracted.

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
• A useful method for summarizing a set of data
is the construction of a frequency table, or a
frequency distribution.
• That is, we divide the overall range of values
into a number of classes and count the
number of observations that fall into each of
these classes or intervals.
• The general rules for constructing a frequency
distribution are

Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant

Professor)
i) There should not be too few or too many
classes.
ii) Insofar as possible, equal class intervals are
preferred. But the first and last classes can be
open-ended to provide for extreme values.
iii) Each class should have a class mark to
represent the classes. It is also named as the class
midpoint of the ith class.
It can be found by taking simple average of the
class boundaries or the class limits of the same
class.
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
1. Setting up the classes
Choose a class width of 5 for each class, then we have seven
classes going from 5 to 9, from 10 to 14, …, and from 35 to 39.
2. Tallying and counting
Classes Tally Marks Count
5–9 3
10 – 14 9
15 – 19 36
20 – 24 35
25 – 29 12
30 – 34 3
35 – 39 2
3. Illustrating the data in tabular form Frequency Distribution for
the Traffic Data Number of autos per period Number of periods
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)
Compiled by: Workineh T (Assistant
Professor)