What is the actual use of the median and mode in statistics compared to the average (mean)?
In: Mathematics
Let’s say you have 99 randomly selected people in a room with Jeff Bezos. The average net worth of everybody in the room will be approximately $2 billion, because Jeff Bezos is worth $200 billion and there are 100 people in there, and the other people have effectively zero money (compared to $200 billion). But saying “the average net worth in the room is $2 billion” is utterly meaningless because it’s really just one person bringing up the average for everybody else. So a more meaningful picture might be the median or the mode… the median is the middle person’s net worth. The mode is the most common net worth. These give you a better picture of what the “average” person looks like in the room, than what the actual average tells you.
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