Question

Lauren is a college sophomore majoring in business. This semester Lauren is taking courses in accounting, economics, management information systems, public speaking, and statistics. The sizes of these classes are, respectively, 375, 35, 45, 25, and 60.Required:Find the mean and the median of the class sizes. What is a better measure of Lauren's "typical class size"—the mean or the median?

Answer 1

Answer:

Mean = 108

Median = 45

The better measure of Lauren's "typical class size" is the Mean

Step-by-step explanation:

1. Calculating mean and median.

The mean is an important measure of central tendency, and it is the average of the measurement of a given set of data. It is calculated as follows:

$Mean\ (\overline {X}) &= \frac{\sum X}{N}$

where X = individual data sets

N = total number of data

$Mean= \frac{375\; +\ 35\ +\ 45\ +\ 25\ +\ 60}{5} \\=\frac{540}{5} \\= 108$

The Median divides the measurements into two equal parts, and in order to calculate the median, the distribution has to first be arranged in ascending or descending order. Arranging this series in descending order:

375, 60, 45, 35, 25

The formula for calculating median is given by:

$M_{d} = \frac{N\ +\ 1}{2} th\ data\\\\=\frac{5\ +\ 1}{2}th\ data\\\\=\frac{6}{2} th\ data\\= 3rd\ data\\M_{d} = 45$

from the list or arranged data in descending order (375, 60, 45, 35, 25), the third data is 45.

Therefore, Median = 45

2. The better measure of typical class size is Mean because the mean depends on all the values of the data sets, whereas the median does not. When there are extreme values (outliers) the effect on the median is very small, whereas it is effectively captured by the mean.