Descriptive Statistics: Averages and Measures of Central Tendency

According to Professor Yule, the requisites of an ideal measure of central tendency are: (i) It should be rigidly defined. (ii) It should be readily comprehensible and easy to calculate. (iii) It should be based on all the observations. (iv) It should be suitable for further mathematical treatment. (v) It should be affected as little as possible by fluctuations of sampling.

The common measures of central tendency are the arithmetic mean or mean, median, and mode.

The arithmetic mean or average, or simply mean of a set of observations is their sum divided by the number of observations.

<p>The characteristics of an ideal measure of central tendency mentioned by Professor Yule are: (i) It should be rigidly defined. (ii) It should be readily comprehensible and easy to calculate. (iii) It should be based on all the observations. (iv) It should be suitable for further mathematical treatment. (v) It should be affected as little as possible by fluctuations of sampling.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The additional characteristic mentioned, which is not by Professor Yule, for an ideal measure of central tendency is: (vi) It should not be affected much by extreme values.</p> Signup and view all the answers