73  Location

For continuous variables, the choice of descriptive statistics depends on the distribution of the data.1

  • 1 For details on regression lines see the Statistical Literacy Workshop.

    • 73.0.1 Measurements for the location of a data set:

    Metric Equation Description Example
    Mode The most common value of a data set
    Median The second quartile, or central value, of a data set
    Mean \(\overline{x}=\frac{\sum_{i=1}^{n}x_{i}}{n}\) The arithmetic mean

    2

  • 2 For Normally distributed data, the mean and the standard deviation are the most appropriate measures of location and spread. Non-normally distributed data is not accurately represented by these measures; the median and IQR are more appropriate since they are robust to outliers.