Mean vs median vs mode — when do you prefer each?
easyAnswer
- Mean: sensitive to outliers, but efficient for symmetric distributions.
- Median: robust to outliers, right choice for skewed data (income, response times).
- Mode: most-common value, useful for categorical or multimodal distributions.
- Rule: report both mean and median for skewed data — a big gap between them signals skew.
Check yourself — multiple choice
- Mean is always best
- Mean: symmetric data; median: robust to outliers / skew; mode: categorical / multimodal — report mean AND median for skewed
- Median never used
- All the same
Mean vs median: skew and outliers drive the choice; report both when unsure.
#descriptive
Practise Statistics Fundamentals
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