Statistics, Measures of Central Tendency I
We are considering a random variable X with a probability distribution which has some parameters. We want to get an idea what these parameters are. We perfom an experiment n times and record the
- utcome. This means we have X1, . . . , Xn i.i.d. random variables, with
probability distribution same as X. We want to use the outcome to infer what the parameters are. Mean The outcomes are x1, . . . , xn. The Sample Mean is x := x1+···+xn
n
. Also sometimes called the average. The expected value of X, EX, is also called the mean of X. Often denoted by µ. Sometimes called population mean. Median The number so that half the values are below, half above. If the sample is of even size, you take the average of the middle terms. Mode The number that occurs most frequently. There could be several modes, or no mode.
Dan Barbasch Math 1105 Chapter 9 Week of September 25 1 / 24