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
Mode is useful for where there isn’t a continuity. For example what is the most popular car color?
Median is useful for where the distribution isn’t normal about the mean, where outliers have an outsize impact – income is a fairly common example here. A small but very wealthy group can move the mean income to the point it starts to lose value when it comes to telling you about a populations economic standing.
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