In mathematics and statistics, central tendency refers to the measure that represents the central or average value of a set of numbers.
There are three primary measures of central tendency:
1. Mean: The mean, often referred to as the average, is calculated by summing up all the values in a dataset and dividing by the total number of values.
- Formula: Mean = (Sum of all values) / (Number of values)
2. Median: The median is the middle value in a sorted, ascending, or descending list of numbers.
If there is an even number of observations, the median is the average of the two middle values.
- Formula (for odd number of observations): Median = Middle value
- Formula (for even number of observations): Median = (Value at position n/2 + Value at position (n/2 + 1)) / 2
3. Mode:
The mode is the value that appears most frequently in a dataset. A dataset may have one mode (unimodal), more than one mode (multimodal), or no mode at all. The mode is particularly useful for categorical data.
- Formula: No specific formula; it’s the value(s) with the highest frequency.