You are responsible for planning the parking needed for a new 256-unit apartment complex, and you are told to base the needs on the statistic "average number of vehicles per household is 1.9."
Which average (mean, median, mode) would be best if: You wanted to be assured that every unit would have two parking spots?
The mean GPA for Central High is 2.9, with the standard deviation of 0.5. Assuming the GPAs are normally distributed, what GPA score will place a student in the top 5% of the class?
Construct 5- yearly moving averages from the following data (10)
YEAR 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
SALE 105 107 109 112 114 116 118 121 123 124 125 127 129
To determine which average would be best in this scenario, let's consider the mean, median, and mode.
1. Mean: The mean is calculated by finding the sum of all values and dividing it by the total number of values. In this case, if the average number of vehicles per household is 1.9, we can assume that for every 100 households, there would be approximately 190 vehicles. To ensure that there are two parking spots for every unit, the mean doesn't provide us with a reliable measure. This is because even if the average is 1.9, it does not guarantee that each unit will have two parking spots.
2. Median: The median is the middle value when all the values are arranged in numerical order. Since the average number of vehicles per household is a non-integer (1.9), the median may not be the best choice either. It would be difficult to determine which specific value represents the median when there can be only whole numbers of vehicles per household.
3. Mode: The mode is the value that appears most frequently in a dataset. In this case, if we assume that the number of vehicles is a discrete variable and we round 1.9 to the nearest whole number, the mode would likely be 2 since it is the most common integer value. Using the mode as a basis, we can be assured that every unit will have at least two parking spots.
In conclusion, if you want to ensure that every unit has two parking spots, it would be best to use the mode (2) as the basis for planning the parking needs rather than the mean or median.