Which of the following is a measure of Central Tendency? Select one: ? a. Standard deviation ? b. Skewness ? c. Mode ? d. Coefficient of variation
The Correct Answer and Explanation is:
The correct answer is c. Mode.
In statistics, a measure of central tendency is a summary statistic that represents the center point or a typical value of a dataset. It provides a single value that attempts to describe the middle of a data distribution. The main goal is to identify a value that is most representative of the entire collection of data. The three most common measures of central tendency are the mean, the median, and the mode.
The Mode is the correct answer because it is one of these fundamental measures. It is defined as the value that appears most frequently in a data set. For instance, in the set of numbers {2, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8}, the mode is 5 because it occurs more often than any other value. By identifying the most common value, the mode provides a sense of where the data is concentrated, thus serving as a measure of its center.
The other options represent different types of statistical measures, not central tendency.
- Standard deviation is a measure of dispersion or variability. It quantifies how spread out the data points are from the mean. A high standard deviation means the data is widely spread, while a low one means the data is clustered close to the mean. It describes the spread, not the center.
- Skewness is a measure of the asymmetry of a data distribution. It indicates whether the data is concentrated on one end of the scale and “tails off” to the other. It describes the shape of the distribution rather than its central location.
- Coefficient of variation is also a measure of dispersion. It is a relative measure, calculated as the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean. It is useful for comparing the degree of variation between different datasets. Like standard deviation, it measures spread, not centrality.
