2/13/17 Moses Mwale

BBA 240
Lecture Three
mkmwale@hotmail.com

School of Business, Economics and

Management Science

BBA240 STATISTICS
Todays Class
Measures of Central Tendency
Mean
Finding the Mean of grouped Data
Median
Finding the Median of grouped Data
Mode
Finding the Mode of grouped Data
Measures of Central
Tendency
A measure of central tendency is a
value that represents a typical, or
central, entry of a data set.
The three most commonly used
measures of central tendency are;
the mean,
the median, and

the mode.
Mean
The mean of a data set is the sum of the
data entries divided by the number of
entries.
To find the mean of a data set, use one
of the following formulas.
Population Mean:
Sample Mean:
Finding the Mean of grouped Data

The mean of a frequency distribution

for a sample is approximated by
Note that
where x and f are the midpoints and
frequencies of a class, respectively.
Finding the Mean of grouped Data

1. Find the midpoint of each class.

2. Find the sum of the products of the

midpoints and the frequencies.

3. Find the sum of the inconsistence

frequencies.
Inconsistence
4. Find the mean of the frequency distribution.
Example: Finding the Mean of a
Frequency Distribution

1. Use the frequency distribution below to

approximate the mean number of minutes that
a sample of Internet subscribers spent online
during their most recent session.
Median
The median is the value of the middle
term in a data set that has been ranked in
increasing order.
The calculation of the median consists of
the following two steps:
1. Rank the data set in increasing order.
2. Find the middle term. The value of this
term is the median.
Median
Example
The following data give the prices (in

thousands of dollars) of seven houses

selected from all houses sold last month in
a city.
312 257 421 289 526 374 497
Find the median.
Finding the Median of a Frequency
Distribution

Example: Alex did a survey of how many

games each of 20 friends owned, and got
this:

9, 15, 11, 12, 3, 5, 10, 20, 14, 6, 8, 8, 12,

12, 18, 15, 6, 9, 18, 11
 Finding the Median of a Frequency
Distribution

Number Freque
The groups (1-5, 6-10, etc) also called
of ncy class intervals, are of width 5
games
1-5 2
The numbers 1, 6, 11 and 16 are the
6 - 10 7 lower class boundaries
11 - 15 8 The numbers 5, 10, 15 and 20 are the
16 - 20 3
upper class boundaries
The midpoints are halfway between
the lower and upper class boundaries
So the midpoints are 3, 8, 13 and 18
Finding the Median of a Frequency
Distribution

The median is in the class where the

cumulative frequency reaches half the
sum of the absolute frequencies.
The median is the mean of the middle

two numbers (the 10th and 11th values)

and they are both in the 11 - 15 group:
We can say "the median group is 11 -

15"
Finding the Median of a Frequency
Distribution
Finding the Median of a Frequency
Distribution

But
if we need to estimate a single Median
value we can use this formula:
Estimated Median
where:

L is the lower class boundary of the group

containing the median

n is the total number of data

cfb is the cumulative frequency of the groups

before the median group

fm is the frequency of the median group

w is the group width

Mode
The mode is the value that occurs with the
highest frequency in a data set.
Example
The following data give the speeds (in miles per
hour) of eight cars that were stopped for
speeding violations.
77 82 74 81 79 84 74 78
Find the mode.
Finding the Mode of a Frequency
Distribution
Finding the Mode of a Frequency
Distribution

We can easily identify the modal group (the

group with the highest frequency), which is 11 -
15
We can say "the modal group is 11 - 15"
But the actual Mode may not even be in that
group! Or there may be more than one mode.
Without the raw data we don't really know.
Finding the Mode of a Frequency
Distribution

But,
we can estimate the Mode using the following
formula:
Estimated Mode
where:
L is the lower class boundary of the modal group
fm-1 is the frequency of the group before the modal
group
fm is the frequency of the modal group
fm+1 is the frequency of the group after the modal
group
w is the group width
Summary
Measures of Central Tendency
Mean
Finding the Mean of grouped Data
Median
Finding the Median of grouped Data
Mode
Finding the Mode of grouped Data