DESCRIPTIVE MEASUREMENT

Graphing and tabling is one tool of describing the data visually, but there is another important tool
what we called as the descriptive measurement. This measurement comprises of three main parts i.e.
1) Measure of Central Tendency mean, median and mode
2) Measure of Variations range, variance and standard deviation
3) Measure of Positioning (Relative Standing) z-scores, percentiles, quartiles, inter-quartile
range
MEASURE OF CENTRAL TENDENCY (Ungrouped Data)
MEAN

EXAMPLE 1:

SOLUTIONS:

EXAMPLE 2:

SOLUTIONS:

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MEDIAN

EXAMPLE 1:

EXAMPLE 2:

Find the median.

MODE

EXAMPLE 1:

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EXAMPLE 2:

EXAMPLE 3:

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MEASURE OF CENTRAL TENDENCY (Grouped Data)

MEAN, MODE AND MEDIAN FOR Single-Valued Data

EXAMPLE 1:
The table below shows the number of cats per households in city A. Find the mean, median and
mode for the following data.
NUMBER OF CATS
0
1
2
3
4

NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLD
58
22
15
8
2

EXAMPLE 2:
The table below shows the years in service for employees of a company. Find the average number of
years the employees of the company have worked. Determine the median and mode for the data
YEARS OF SERVICE
1
2
3
4
5
6

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NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES
5
7
10
8
12
3

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MEAN with class interval

EXAMPLE 1:
The following table shows the number of employees according to their age. Find the mean.

AGE Number of employees

8
20 - 24
37
25 - 29
25
30 - 34
48
35 - 39
27
40 - 44
10
45 - 49
SOLUTIONS:

EXAMPLE 2:
The data below is the frequency distribution of the daily commuting (in minutes) from home to work
for a sample of 25 employees of a company.
Find the mean of daily commuting time.

SOLUTIONS:

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MEDIAN with class interval

Determine the class median by divide the number of sample by 2, then find the median by using the
following formula:

1
= + [2
]

Where:
= the total frequency
1 = the cumulative frequency before the class median
= the frequency of the class median
= the lower boundary of the class median
= the class width
EXAMPLE 1:
The following table shows the number of employees according to their age. Find the median.

AGE Number of employees

8
20 - 24
37
25 - 29
25
30 - 34
48
35 - 39
27
40 - 44
10
45 - 49

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EXAMPLE 2:
The data below is the frequency distribution of the daily commuting (in minutes) from home to work
for a sample of 25 employees of a company. Find the median of daily commuting time.

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MODE with interval data

Identify the class mode (the class with the highest frequency), then use the following formula to find
the mode
= + [
Where:

]
+

= the difference in frequency between the class mode and the class before it
= the difference in frequency between the class mode and the class after it
= the lower boundary of the class mode
= the class width
EXAMPLE 1:
The following table shows the number of employees according to their age. Find the mode.

AGE Number of employees

8
20 - 24
37
25 - 29
25
30 - 34
48
35 - 39
27
40 - 44
10
45 - 49
SOLUTIONS:

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EXAMPLE 2:
The data below is the frequency distribution of the daily commuting (in minutes) from home to work
for a sample of 25 employees of a company. Find the mode of daily commuting time.

SOLUTIONS:

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EXAMPLE:
Refer to data set below (the ages of a sample from 20 students)

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MEASURE OF VARIATIONS

To have a more bigger picture of the distributions of data

Variations, Dispersions or Spread of data ~ range, variance and standard deviation.

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EXAMPLE 1: (ungrouped data)

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EXAMPLE 2: (single-valued interval)

The table below shows the years in service for employees of a company. Find the average number of
years the employees of the company have worked. Find the variance and standard deviation.
YEARS OF SERVICE
1
2
3
4
5
6

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES
5
7
10
8
12
3

EXAMPLE 2: (grouped data)

The data below shows a sample of the number of employees of a particular organization in a
different age groups. Find the variance and standard deviation.

AGE Number of employees

8
20 - 24
37
25 - 29
25
30 - 34
48
35 - 39
27
40 - 44
10
45 - 49
Solutions:
Midpoint (x)- age
22
27
32
37
42
47

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EXAMPLE 3: (grouped data)

The data below shows the frequency distribution of the number of hours a sample of 60 students
playing games per week. Find the variance and standard deviation.

Solutions:
Midpoint (x)hours per week

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