Inspired by a question about standard dev, this one is a question that has been bugging me for years. I’ve been using the mean and stdev a lot in my work and during my college years, but I never really used median and mode outside when it was introduced. I’ve seen no use for it so far. So, ELI5? especially to those people who use this frequently.
In: Mathematics
Not sure about mode, but I’ll take a stab at median. Median is often preferable to mean/average for most statistical purposes. The reason is that the mean/average can be skewed by outliers. Thus, the median is often a better representation of the “typical” value for non-normal distributions.
Example: In the U.S., mean/average household income is about $90,000. But the U.S. has lots of ultra-wealthy people who are skewing that mean. *Median* household income is only around $60,000, which is a better measure of the “typical” income of an American household.
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