In a biology class, you are growing bean plants. The heights of 8 of the plants in inches are given 12, 14, 9, 10, 8, 12, 16, 7. What is the mean, median and mode of this set of data?
mean: add 'em up and divide by 8
median: sort them low-to-high, then take the average of the 4th and 5th values
mode: the value which occurs most often
Post your work if you get stuck
In a biology class, you are growing bean plants. The heights of 8 of the plants in inches are given below. What is the mean, median and mode of this set of data?
12, 14, 9, 10, 8, 12, 16, 7
To find the mean, median, and mode of the given data set, follow these steps:
Step 1: Arrange the data set in ascending order:
7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 12, 14, 16
Step 2: Find the mean:
To find the mean, add up all the numbers in the data set and divide the sum by the total number of values.
Mean = (7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 12 + 12 + 14 + 16) / 8
Mean = 88 / 8
Mean = 11
So, the mean height of the bean plants is 11 inches.
Step 3: Find the median:
To find the median, arrange the data set in ascending order and find the middle value. If there are two middle values, find their average.
Since there are 8 values, the middle value will be the fourth value.
Median = 10
So, the median height of the bean plants is 10 inches.
Step 4: Find the mode:
To find the mode, identify the value(s) that appear(s) most frequently in the data set.
In this case, the mode is 12 because it appears twice, more than any other value.
So, the mode height of the bean plants is 12 inches.
Therefore, the mean height is 11 inches, the median height is 10 inches, and the mode height is 12 inches.
To find the mean, median, and mode of a set of data, follow these steps:
1. Mean: Add up all the values and divide the sum by the total number of values.
To find the mean (average), add up all the heights:
12 + 14 + 9 + 10 + 8 + 12 + 16 + 7 = 88
Then divide the sum by the total number of heights, which is 8:
88 ÷ 8 = 11
So the mean height of the bean plants is 11 inches.
2. Median: Arrange the values in ascending order and find the middle value.
First, arrange the heights in ascending order:
7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 12, 14, 16
Since there are 8 heights, the middle position will be the average of the 4th and 5th value:
(10 + 12) ÷ 2 = 11
So the median height of the bean plants is 11 inches.
3. Mode: Identify the value(s) that appear most frequently.
In this case, there is no value that appears more than once, so there is no mode.
To summarize:
- Mean: 11 inches
- Median: 11 inches
- Mode: None (no mode)