Measures of central tendency include descriptive statistics including the mean, median and mode that are used to describe what the average person or response in a particular study is like. It is important as a research consumer to understand how these statistics are calculated and used to summarize and organize information in a study.
Before talking about these measures of central tendency, it is important to know what a normal distribution is. The best measure of central tendency depends on a number of things including weather data has a normal distribution or not. The theoretical concept of a normal distribution is covered in more depth in another video, but simply put it is the idea that when data are gathered from interval or ratio level measures and plotted on a graph it will resemble a normal curve.
The three measures of central tendency described in this video would all fall at the same midline point on a normal distribution curve. However, if data are not normally distributed certain measures may be better than others. The appropriateness of each measure is also influenced by the level of measurement used in the study.
Throughout this video I will have examples of how to calculate the mean, median and mode on the screen. These examples will use the data I made up for a fake study about hours students spend watching online videos and reading for studying purposes.
In statistics, mean is synonymous with the average. Whether it is true or not you could try remembering that the average girl can be mean when they want to be.
Or, if you can remember what the other two are so you can figure this one out through the process of elimination.