Click or tap on Mean vs Median Links to an external site and

Click or tap on Mean vs. Median (Links to an external site.) and follow these instructions:

http://media.pearsoncmg.com/cmg/pmmg_mml_shared/animations/statistics/west_applets_HTML5/meanmedian.html

First, reset the lower limit on the x-axis to zero and the upper limit to 1000, by
a. Clicking on the “Add point” button and enter a value of 0 in the input box, then click “OK”.
b. Repeat the above step to add the value 1000.

Remove the data points for 0 and 1000 by clicking the “Reset” button. Notice the lower and upper limits on the x-axis stay at 0 and 1000. Just the two data points are removed.

Now put 6 points between 0 and 200 on the line. (You do that by clicking on the line at the place where you want to add the point.) Or, you can click the “Add point” button for each point you want to enter.

Assume that these data points represent the selling prices of houses in thousands of dollars in a particular neighborhood.

- Record the mean and the median for those six data points.
- Next, add one more point close to 1000.

That would represent the selling price of a house that sold for close to 1,000,000 dollars.

- Record the new mean and median for the seven points that you now have.

Discussion Activity: Complete the following and post your results in the discussion:

List the mean and median for the first six data points you entered.

List the mean and median after you added the seventh data point.

What impact does the outlier (the house with selling price close to 1,000,000 dollars) have on the mean and on the median?

Suppose the data points represent the selling prices of houses. After adding the seventh data point, would the mean or the median be the better measure of central tendency to use to report the “typical” selling price of a house in this neighborhood? Explain your answer.

Solution

1.)Values : 25, 50, 90, 120, 160, 180

Mean = 104.67

Median = 105

2.) 7th value = 950

Mean = 225

Median = 120

3.) The mean increases significantly by adding the outlier but the median is almost the same.

4.) The median will be a better measure of Central tendency as the meadian will be closer to the data values. If we use the mean our result will be inflated significantly