Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, 4/e

Michael Thorne, Mississippi State University -- Mississippi State
Martin Giesen, Mississippi State University -- Mississippi State

Measures of Central Tendency

Definitions

central tendency	trend for scores in a distribution to be concentrated near the middle of the distribution



mode	most frequently occurring score in a frequency distribution



bimodal	a distribution with two modes



multimodal	distribution with two or more modes



median	the score in the middle - at the 50th percentile



percentile	score at or below which a given percentage of the scores lie



mean	the sum of the scores divided by their number; the arithmetic average



deviations	differences of scores from a standard or reference value; usually refers to differences between a score and the mean



unbiased estimate	statistic that shows no systematic tendencies relative to the estimated parameter

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