A university dean is interested in measuring the research productivity of the seven members of the Psychology Department.The dean obtains the number of publications for each faculty member.They are as follows: 5,10,15,15,20,25,and 180.If the dean wants to describe these data,which measure of central tendency would paint a misleading picture of the research productivity of the department?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The mean is sensitive to extreme values, so the extremely high value of 180 would skew the measure of central tendency towards being higher than what is actually representative of the department's research productivity. The median or mode would be better measures of central tendency in this case. The standard deviation is a measure of variability, not central tendency.

A University Dean Is Interested in Measuring the Research Productivity