Mode
Most common or most frequent value (used with nominal data)
- + Easy to calculate
- + Can be used with nominal data
- – Doesn’t tell us anything except which thing happens most
- – Multimodel distributions can be uninformative
Median
Middle number when data is in rank order (usually ordinal data)
- + Relatively easy to calculate
- + Not affected by extreme values (so useful for interval data with extreme values)
- – Lacks sensitivity when compared to the mean – this is because it doesn’t take actual values into account
Mean
The arithmetic average – ass up all the individual scores and divide by the number of scores you have. Takes into account each actual value
- + The most sensitive measure of central tendency
- – Influenced by extreme values
- – More complex to calculate than other measures