Hints about the cognitive complexity of central tendency are found in the
historical account of its development. It was Tycho Brache in the late 1500s who
introduced the use of means as central tendencies to astronomy (Plackett, 1970). He
used them to address a problem that had long troubled astronomers: What to take as
the position of a star, given that the observed coordinates at a particular time tended
to vary from observation to observation. When early astronomers began computing
means of observations, they were very cautious, if not suspicious, about whether and