- Understand the difference between mean and median
Two Measures of Center—The Mean and the Median
- The mean of a data set is also commonly known as the average of a data set.
- The median of the data set is the value “in the middle” after all of the values have been arranged in ascending order.
Every year, bullfrogs compete in a jumping contest at the Calaveras County Jumping Frog Jubilee (a contest inspired by a short story by Mark Twain). One year, researchers recorded the jump distances of frogs entered in the contest.[1]
The following are the jump distances (in meters) for a sample of [latex]15[/latex] bullfrogs.
| 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.6 | 0.8 | 1.3 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 |
| 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.9 | 1.9 | 2.0 | 2.2 |
The jump distances have been arranged in order from the shortest distance to the longest distance.
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- Astley, H. C., Abbott, E. M., Azizi, E., Marsh, R. L., & Roberts, T. J. (2013). Chasing maximal performance: A cautionary tale from the celebrated jumping frogs of Calaveras County. The Journal of Experimental Biology, 216(21), 3947–3953. ↵