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Summarizing Distributions, Measuring Center

• The mean is the average of the data set. It is influenced by outliers.

• When computing the median, make sure the data is ordered from lowest to highest.

• The mode is the most frequently occurring value in the data set. This is best used with qualitative variables.

• The mean is the best measure of center since it uses all of the observations; however, if the data are skewed, the median is the preferred measure of center.