Mean/Simple Average
The mean is simple average of the dataset and it is denoted by
- μ for population
- X̄ for sample
Mean = (x1+x2+x3+….+xN)/N
Mean is the most commonly used measure of central tendency
the downside is it is easily affected by the outliers in the dataset
Mean can be termed as Center of gravity of the given data.
Median
The media is basically the middle number in an ordered dataset.
median = (n+1)/2
n is the number of observations in the dataset.
If the median is coming between two consecutive observations in the dataset, the media would be a simple average of the two observations.
Median distributes the population into 2 equal sets.
Mode
The Mode is the value that occurs most often.
This can be used for both numerical and categorical data.
in general, we often have multiple modes depending on the dataset.
There is definitely no best among the three measures of central tendencies. it’s best to use all three together. Using only one is definitely the worst.