Question

Give one example of a situation in which

(i) the mean is an appropriate measure of central tendency.

(ii) the mean is not an appropriate measure of central tendency but the median is an appropriate measure of central tendency.

Answer 1

(i) While if we take the case of calculating the weight of students in a class, then we should use mean rather than median. In such cases taking median is not suitable.

(ii) If the score of students in a class are 1,2,3,4,20

So if we calculate the mean =

5

1+2+3+4+20

=

5

30

=6

Median =3

So, median is better or appropriate measure because 20 is much greater than other numbers and because of 20 the mean has come out to 6.

∴ Its better to take median than mean.

Answer 2

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i) Mean is an appropriate measure of central tendency when all the terms of the data are fairly close to each other. Let's take an example, we have data of the form: 50, 51, 55, 57, 52. Mean of this data is equal to 53 and it is fairly close to all the terms of the data.

ii) Therefore, the mean will be an appropriate measure of central tendency. In this case, it can be observed that some observations are very far from the other observations. Therefore, the mean will not be an appropriate measure of central tendency but the median will be an appropriate measure of central tendency.