What is the actual use of the median and mode in statistics compared to the average (mean)?
In: Mathematics
The average is affected by extreme values. Like if in Fentucky everybody makes $1 a year except for one person who makes $1,000,000,000 a year, the average will not be useful for determining how a normal person lives. That’s an extreme example but for things where outlier values are an issue but can’t just be tossed out, median can be more useful.
Mode is usually used for categorical data. Like if Coke is comparing the sales of Coke Zero, Vault (RIP), and Mellow Yellow then they probably just care about how much of each one is sold instead of trying to construct an average.
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