Central Tendency

Question

Find the mean for the following data: 15,34,32,46,22,36,34,28,52,28

Now add one more number to the data set: 112

How does this number affect the new mean?

Answer 1

Recall that the mean is another term for the average. You can find the mean of the first set of numbers by adding them up and then dividing by the number of values you just added together.

That is: mean = (15+34+32+46+22+36+34+28+52+28)/10 = 32.7

Now, if we add 112 to this list of numbers, we will get an updated mean: (15+34+32+46+22+36+34+28+52+28+112)/11 = 39.9

*Note that we now had to divide our sum by 11 since we added an extra value to our list.

Since 112 was so much larger than the other numbers in the list, adding it to the mix caused the mean to increase significantly.