Answer to Question #12833 in Statistics and Probability for Dornesa

Question

Identify the circumstances in which the median rather than the mean is the preferred measure of central tendency

Answer 1

As measures of central tendency, the mean and the median each have advantages and disadvantages. The median may be a better indicator of the most typical value if a set of scores has an outlier(an outlier is an extreme value that differs greatly from other values). For this reason, the median often is used when there are a few extreme values that could greatly influence the mean and distort what might be considered typical. This often is the case with home prices and with income data for a group of people, which often is very skewed. For such data, the median often is reported instead of the mean. For example, in a group of people,
if the salary of one person is 10 times the mean, the mean salary of the group will be higher because of the unusually large salary. In this case, the median may better represent the typical salary level of the group.