Below is a set of data that shows the sales made by 20 staff members in the sales department
at XYZ Limited for the months of August and September 2020.
Sales Person August September
1 21900 12600
2 12400 13500
3 9800 22000
4 6800 34000
5 13050 12500
6 14900 25540
7 15250 21700
8 8900 67800
9 16451 18970
10 13230 16450
11 16450 23220
12 12890 21670
13 13670 17600
14 14700 32420
15 10430 23570
16 11670 14700
17 13200 22400
18 11100 21600
19 19800 26400
20 15700 19700
Based on the above table:
a. What do the values of the mean and median tell you about the shape of the distribution of
data?
The mean and median can tell you about the shape of the distribution of data.
- Mean: The mean is the average of all the values in the data set. If the mean is close to the median, it suggests that the data is symmetrically distributed. If the mean is greater than the median, it suggests that the data is positively skewed. If the mean is less than the median, it suggests that the data is negatively skewed.
- Median: The median is the middle value of a data set when the values are arranged in ascending order. If the median is close to the mean, it suggests that the data is symmetrically distributed. If the median is less than the mean, it suggests that the data is positively skewed. If the median is greater than the mean, it suggests that the data is negatively skewed.
In order to determine the shape of the distribution of the data, we would need to calculate the mean and median of the sales data for August and September 2020 and compare them to each other.