Which is the best measure of central tendency for the type of data below–the mean, the median, or the mode? Explain.
Hours of sleep each night
Median; there will be outliers
Range; there are no outliers
Mode; the data are non-numeric
Mean; the outliers are limited
MY ANSWER: Median; there will be outliers
To determine the best measure of central tendency for the given data about the hours of sleep each night, we should consider the characteristics of the data.
In this case, the best measure of central tendency would be the median. The median is the middle value in a dataset when arranged in ascending order. It is not affected by extreme outliers, meaning that it is a robust measure of central tendency.
The reason for choosing the median is that the data of hours of sleep each night can potentially have outliers. Outliers are values that are significantly different from the other values in the dataset. Sleep patterns can be disrupted due to various factors, such as sleep disorders, illness, stress, or lifestyle choices, resulting in extreme values that deviate significantly from the majority of the data points.
By using the median, we can avoid the influence of these outliers and obtain a more representative value of the "typical" amount of sleep each night for the majority of individuals in the dataset, considering that outliers are common in sleep data.