Maria has the following scores on exams in her social studies class: 86, 75, 97, 58, 94, and 58.
Find the mean, median, and mode of the scores.
Should Maria’s social studies teacher use the mean, median, or mode of the exam scores to convince Maria that she needs to study more regularly for her exams?
Mean: To find the mean, we add up all the scores and divide by the number of scores. (86+75+97+58+94+58) / 6 = 77.7
Median: To find the median, we need to arrange the scores in order from lowest to highest. 58, 58, 75, 86, 94, 97. The middle numbers are 75 and 86, so the median is (75+86) / 2 = 80.5
Mode: The mode is the number that appears most frequently. In this case, there are two modes: 58 and 94.
Maria’s social studies teacher should use the mean to convince her to study more regularly because it gives an overall picture of her performance and takes into account all of her scores. However, the teacher should also point out the wide range of scores and encourage Maria to work on consistency in her studying.