based on over 800 housing prices collected at random from the city of Los Angeles, an investigator constructed a histogram and found that the distribution of housing prices was heavily skewed to the right. Which of the following statistics will best represent the center of this distribution
A) standard deviation
B) 25th percentile
C) 50th percentile
D) mode
E) mean
50th percentile
mode
To find the statistic that best represents the center of a distribution, we typically look for a measure of central tendency. In this case, as the distribution of housing prices is heavily skewed to the right, the mean (E) may not be the best representation of the center, as it can be heavily influenced by extreme values.
Instead, we should look for a measure that is more robust to extreme values, such as the median (or the 50th percentile). The median represents the value that separates the lower 50% of the data from the upper 50%. Since the distribution is heavily skewed to the right, the median can provide a more accurate representation of the center.
Therefore, the best statistic to represent the center of this skewed distribution of housing prices is the 50th percentile (C), or the median.