Measures of location and spread

Measures of central tendency

Measure of location is a single valie describing position in a data set. If this value describes
the centre of the data, it is called a measure of central tendency.

Mode is best to use when data is qualitative.

Median is best to use when data is quantitative and without extreme values.
Mean is used for quantitative data but can be affected by extremes. The mean of a
frequency table is the sum of data values * frequencies / sum of frequencies.

Other measures of location

To find upper and lower quantiles for discrete data:

• Lower quartile – divide n by 4, if whole, lower quartile is halfway between this data
point and the one above. If not whole, round up and choose this data point.
• Upper quartile – same as above but divide n by ¾

Measures of spread

Range
This can be affected by extreme values

Interquartile range – upper quartile – lower quartile

This is not affected by extreme values

Variance and standard deviation