Learn how to calculate and interpret the mean, median, and mode, the three main measures of central tendency.
In statistics, central tendency is a central or typical value for a probability distribution. The three most common measures of central tendency are the mean, median, and mode. Each provides a different perspective on the "center" of the data.
The mean is calculated by adding all the values in a dataset and dividing the sum by the total number of values. While it is the most popular measure, it can be skewed by extremely high or low values (outliers).
To find the median, arrange the data points from smallest to largest and pick the middle number. If there is an even number of data points, the median is the average of the two middle numbers. The median is robust against outliers.
The mode is the number that appears most often in a dataset. A dataset may have one mode, more than one mode (bimodal/multimodal), or no mode at all if no values repeat.