POLS 2072Q Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Robust Statistics, Central Tendency, Frequency Distribution
27 Feb 2019
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Document Summary
Central tendency identifies the most representative value of a distribution. There are three major statistics used to summarize the central tendency of a variable. The value occurring with the greatest frequency in a given category. The mode may be used to describe the central tendency of any variable - nominal, ordinal, or interval. For nominal variables, it"s the only measure that can be used. Mode is the value occurring with the greatest frequency, not the frequency of the variable itself. If 12 people said their favorite pie is apple, and that is the greatest frequency at which a value in that category occurs, the mode is apple, not the number 12. It may not be very descriptive of the data because the most common category may not actually occur that often. The value of the category of the middle case, that case which divides an ordered frequency distribution into two equal sized halves.
